Heidi Wilken, lead dive safety officer, front, and Olivia Castro, diver, head out to an area in Puget Sound near Tacoma’s Owen Beach to survey kelp, Monday, July 24, 2023.

Puget Sound was a global kelp capital for millennia. If we work together, we can enlist the next generation of conservationists to jumpstart the recovery of kelp, salmon, and orca.

Across much of Puget Sound, they’re fighting to survive. According to the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan, bull kelp forests in South Puget Sound have declined by 62% since 1870.

Kollins will look to grow bull kelp, in contrast to Spranger's plans for a 10-acre plot of sugar kelp. Both are seaweeds native to Puget Sound. Both farms have drawn pushback from Sound Action, ...

And what we found is in South Puget Sound - one of our areas of greatest concern - the current distribution of bull kelp is about 20% of what it was historically. So, there's been a big change here.

The Washington state Department of Natural Resources and the Squaxin Island Tribe will join forces to try to conserve the Squaxin Island Kelp Bed, the last major kelp bed in South Puget Sound.

Kelp has vanished from about 80% of the shorelines around which it once grew in Puget Sound, according to a 2023 report from Washington’s Kelp Forest Monitoring Alliance. South of the Tacoma ...

It can grow more than a foot a day. The specimens that wash up on beaches have detached from the ocean floor. Puget Sound has lost about two-thirds of its bull kelp forests, according to PDZA.

Across much of Puget Sound, they’re fighting to survive. According to the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan , bull kelp forests in South Puget Sound have declined by 62% since 1870.

Heidi Wilken, lead dive safety officer, front, and Olivia Castro, diver, head out to an area in Puget Sound near Tacoma’s Owen Beach to survey kelp, Monday, July 24, 2023.