Award: OCE-1524377

Kelp plants are the foundation of kelp forest ecosystems, which support coastal economies worldwide through fisheries and tourism. When large storm events dislodge kelp plants, the recovery of the entire ecosystem depends on the ability of small kelp plants to reestablish and grow. It has been shown that herbivores, such as snails and sea urchins, can prevent the reestablishment of kelp plants after large storm events, with the potential to have cascading effects on the livelihoods of the coastal communities that rely on this ecosystem. This research determined how environmental changes expected with increasing carbon dioxide concentrations affect the energetic demands and grazing rates of important kelp forest herbivores, as well as the growth of important plant species. We found that changes in the seawater chemistry (i.e., ocean acidification) and temperature (i.e., warming) increased the energetic demands of some herbivores, while the effects on marine plants were less clear. These results are a critical first step in understanding how ocean acidification and warming could change kelp forest recovery dynamics and persistence in the future. While our results suggest that some kelp forest herbivores could increase the grazing pressure on small kelp plants in the future, which could potentially impede the reestablishment and recovery of kelp forest ecosystems after storm events, species-specific responses and mismatches between changes in some herbivores energetic demands and grazing rates suggest that the effects on kelp forest ecosystem are likely to be complex. This project also supported the development of an outreach program with high school students in Pajaro Valley, a region of California serving a high percentage of Latino/a students. The aim was to build connections between our relatively new lab and high school students in the local community to increase knowledge of pathways to careers in marine science within populations typically underrepresented in the discipline. Through this project, a group of five graduate and undergraduate students and myself made classroom visits to three high school science classes via the MESA program at UC Santa Cruz. During this visit, we introduced students to our research on ocean change through interactive activities. We then organized a field trip to our lab, Long Marine Laboratory, where students rotated through several activities (visiting the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, experiencing a virtual reality version of acidified reefs, assembling and trying on SCUBA gear, and participating in a lab with algae and invertebrates). We then transitioned to remote interactions with the high school classes, primarily through videos created by my students and remote question/answer sessions with the classes. To do this, two of my graduate students participated in a ten-day class on creating short science documentaries, hosted by Science Film. As part of this class, they each created short documentaries about their path to science that we posted on our website and used for the outreach program. In addition, the students that attended the training then organized two smaller trainings with my lab group and the broader marine science community to teach others some of the skills they learned in the class, resulting in two more videos for sharing with the high school classes. All of these lab videos now hosted on the Kroeker Lab website served as touchstones for discussions regarding pathways to science careers with the high school classes. Last Modified: 11/02/2017 Submitted by: Kristy J Kroeker