UVic kelp study sets sail
May 06, 2025
The Times Colonist and CBC news interviewed UVic geography professor, Maycira Costa, UVic biology student, Grace Dalton, and UVic geography alumna, Gabrielle Wade about their role in the One Island, One Ocean scientific voyage to collect kelp health data.
Journalist, Darron Kloster writes:
"Kelp is one of Grace Dalton’s passions. The undergraduate student free dives and snorkels in the bull kelp beds often around Victoria."
“Kelp forests are extremely important and critical for our ocean ecosystems,” she said. “We compare them to the forests on land … they provide food, shelter safety for so many animals from vertebrates to invertebrates."
“They provide carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, so it touches so many things in the ocean.”
"She said the study will help to determine how factors like warmer sea water from climate change, pollution or increasing sea urchin populations could be affecting the health of kelp forests."
UVic’s Spectral Lab, lead by Dr.Maycira Costa with Wade identified the kelp sites along the B.C. coast, South America and Alaska.
"Kelp are the rainforests of the ocean," Costa says. "And they uptake a lot of carbon from the atmosphere of the ocean."