Alternative Seeding Methods
Project Lead: Maisie Roy-Musor
Project Location: Victoria, BC
Contact:
Project Overview
Previous kelp restoration efforts have exposed the challenges associated with scalability and feasibility of placing kelp seedlings on the ocean floor. Most frequent planting approaches involve seeding microscopic kelp stages onto rocks (e.g. Green Gravel), tiles, lines, or other substrates in the lab, inducing reproduction and growing small kelp blades, then deploying the substrates into the ocean. However, this seeded-substrate is expensive to produce at ecologically-relevant scales, difficult to transport and deploy, and requires kelp biology expertise to carry out, making the approaches more inaccessible to community-led projects.
Goals and Objectives
At The Kelp Rescue Initiative we aim to develop scalable approaches to re-plant kelp at degraded sites, for example through directly seeding kelp to the ocean floor.
Photo: A KRI diver deploying GametoGlue onto substrate at Denman Island
PC: Rebecca Benjamin-Carey
Photo: Trials of GametoGlue formulas on terracotta tiles
PC: Maisie Roy-Musor
Research Methods
Photo: Lines of GamteoGlue that have been deployed onto substrate alongside some Leather Stars on the move
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One solution we’ve developed and are looking to refine is “GametoGlue”, a gel-based adhesive which you can mix microscopic kelp stages into on-site, paste onto the ocean floor in caulking tubes or deploy over the boat as adhesive gel-beads. Ideally, the adhesive will adhere to the sea floor on rocky substrate, slowly biodegrade and release the kelp to establish in the cracks and crevices of the ocean floor.
We develop and test new GametoGlue formulations, using different developmental stages and densities of kelp in the lab at UVic and the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre and trial them at sites in Barkley Sound and in the North Salish Sea.
2024
January
2024
Spring
2024 Summer
2024 Fall/Winter
2025-
2026
Project
Start
Field Pilot Tests of GametoGlue
Laboratory Tests Of GametoGlue Across Kelp Life Stages
Laboratory Optimization Tests
Large Scale Pilot Studies