Science, Indigenous knowledge team up to restore Canada’s kelp. (Sea otters help, too.)

A quarter-million-dollar kelp restoration project in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, has planted more than 4,200 square meters of new kelp habitat since early 2026, grown on submerged lines before transplanting to degraded sites. The project is run jointly by the nonprofit Redd Fish Restoration Society, the business West Coast Kelp, and the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, with funding from the provincial government and groups including the World Wildlife Fund of Canada.

Sea otters, hunted to near extinction for fur trade pelts by the early 20th century and now numbering close to 1,500 in the sound under current protections, are helping by eating the sea urchins that would otherwise devour the kelp. Elsewhere on the coast, a Haida Nation and Parks Canada project removed 75% of sea urchins from a small stretch of shoreline, after which kelp expanded several meters further into the water within two years.

The restoration also aims to support struggling salmon populations, since juvenile salmon shelter and forage in kelp forests, a role Tla-o-qui-aht natural resources manager Saya Masso said his ancestors already understood.

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