In to the Deep, Produced by Graeme Gerguson, Directed by Howard Hall. It's an IMAX Presentation.  
 
  What Eats Kelp?

Many animals find kelp tasty and tender. Turban snails and some sea slugs (nudibranchs) graze on stipes while kelp bass and sea hares feed at the base. Opaleyes and half moon perch nibble on juvenile and adult plants. If not gobbled up by urchins and abalone, bits of drift kelp washed into inshore waters or deep submarine canyons may become part of another marine food chain.

 
 
  There are several species or types of kelps. The best known species is giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). It grows in the cold waters off the western coasts of North America and South America.

  
 
The Kelp Forest: A Community Beneath The Sea
 
The kelp forest is a complex, crowded community and home to more than 750 species of marine life. Like a forest on land, the kelp forest is a collection of several habitats, from the sunlit canopy at the surface to the holdfasts at the bottom.
  
Macrocystis
 
Plankton
 
Kelp provide the frame work to this underwater community. They extend a third dimension into an otherwise open, featureless ocean, Giant kelp (Macrocystis) and bull kelp (Nerocystis) create the canopy or top layer. Their buoyant, matted fronds filter the sunlight reaching the seafloor, thus influencing what other kelps and algae will grow in the understory. Collectively, these marine plants, along with water depth, rocky outcrops and sandy patches form a diversity of habitats which, in turn, attract a multitude of creatures.

 

Within the sunlit canopy, surf perches, halfmoon perches and blacksmiths feed, court, mater and spawn. The canopy is also a nursery and hiding place for young animals too small to fend for themselves in the open ocean or inshore waters.		  
Filter Feeders

 
Invertebrates
  · These waters are also rich in microscopic life forms. These minute organisms, collectively called plankton, are tiny floating plants and animals, invertebrate larvae and young fish. Only a few will reach maturity as they continuously drift with the currents. Most become food for the filter feeders and other creatures of the kelp forest.
 
In the middle zone, interlocking stipes and blades furnish hiding places for small fish and many kinds of shrimp. Black surf perch, kelp bass, senoritas and sheep head fish slip between the fronds. Stipes are highways for turban snails, kelp crabs and other crawling invertebrates. The kelp plant itself becomes living space on which barnacles, tube worms and other small animals anchor themselves. Many fish in the middle layer feed on the animals clinging to the kelp.
  
Sessile
 
Nerocystis
  Competing for a foothold at the bottom, corals, anemones, sponges and other sessile animals carpet every available inch of hard surface. Here, male garabaldis make nests of red algae and invite females to lay their eggs. The holdfast's tangled tendrils furnish hiding places for tiny crabs, worms, urchins, mussels, clams, brittle stars and baby octopi. Bottom-dwelling rockfishes, moray eels and scorpion fish feed on these invertebrates and smaller fish.
 
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    How do Kelps reproduce?  
    Where in the world?  
    Plants of the Ocean Forest  
    A Natural resource  
 
 
   
 

Key Concepts :

· Kelp forests shelter and nurture a complex, diverse community of marine life.

· Like terrestrial forests, kelp forests are composed of several stratified habitats or "layers of life".

· Kelps forests also provide associated food sources thus enabling hundreds of species of animals to exist in this marine ecosystem.

· Plants and animals of the kelp forest have an array of adaptations that help them to survive here.