Fish Reef Project

Hello Fellow Fish Reefers! We are back to our regular scheduled programing with Cave Watch, Episode 3 🌊

Inside the sea caves, you’ll find life in every nook and cranny. Yellow kelp crabs, decorator crabs, lobsters, red coralline algae, a Spanish shawl nudibranch, and even a lone giant kelp sapling were spotted across the 16 Sea Caves.

The Sea Caves are biogenic, marine life is establishing and growing on what was once a man-made structure. In some places, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference.

Watch to the end to see the a tiny supprise. 🪸

Next week we will see even more of the life that has made a home in the Sea Caves. 

As always, thank you for helping oceans thrive!

Hello Fish Reefers! Welcome back to Cave Watch, episode two.

This is our 15th dive on the Sea Caves off Goleta, California, right in front of Goleta Pier and Goleta Beach County Park, the very shoreline these reefs help protect. What we found this time is something marine biologists call the halo effect. For 20 to 30 meters in every direction around the Sea Caves, the entire seafloor has come alive. The structures stabilize the sand, and that stability is letting red marine algae like dulse take hold across the whole area.

Giant kelp is missing this year, warm water conditions are keeping it from establishing. In its place you’ll see brown algae, Laminaria setchellii mixed with Alaria marginata, growing three to four feet tall on their own yearly cycle. When they die back and the water cools again, that’s the window for Macrocystis pyrifera, giant kelp, to reestablish and grow all the way to the surface.

This is exactly why more Sea Cave structure matters. It gives kelp forests something solid to rebuild on, so recovery happens faster and the ecosystem can weather El Niño years instead of losing ground to them.

Tune in next week for episode three of Cave Watch, we’re diving into the animals that call the Sea Caves home.

Thank you for helping oceans thrive!

Hello Fish Reefers! Two years ago we deployed 16 Sea Caves in 36 feet of water off Goleta, California, creating the only biogenic Sea Cave reef in California.

This week’s Cave Watch documents a full marine ecosystem transformation. We start on a bare seabed with almost no life, then watch biofilm form, the first building block of ocean restoration. Just 7 months later, giant kelp reached the surface and dominated the reef for an entire year, turning our Sea Caves into a thriving kelp forest habitat.

Now we’re entering an El Niño year. Sea surface temperatures off the Southern California coast never dropped below 60 degrees, and the kelp forest is starting to change.

Tune in next week for the next episode of Cave Watch to meet the creatures who have mad a home in the Sea Cave reef 🌊

Thank you for helping ocean life thrive! ®