ON THE FIRST DAY I lived in Northern California, I stood on the beach and stared at a golden-green object washed up on the sand — a shining coil with a perfect bulb at one end. It was, I learned, a strand of kelp, and I remember thinking it would make a really cool tattoo.
I still haven’t gotten that tattoo, nor have I put on a wetsuit to dive into a kelp forest. But in the two years since then, I’ve been immersed in the seaweed’s vital and threatened world, largely because of an ecosystem of researchers and artists who are all leveraging their talents toward its survival.
Coastal California life has blossomed because of kelp. Bull kelp, a bulbous
