Off our coast there are magical
underwater forests a world of giant
seaweed known as kelp.
These underwater forests are among the
most productive places on earth.
Supporting a huge range of marine life.
The forests are vital nursery grounds,
giving sanctuary to the young of many
commercial fish as they feed and hide
among its fronds
and if you're lucky you might glimpse a
common cuttlefish
or the exceedingly rare short snouted
seahorse. In fact these forests are so
special that they're one of the most
biodiverse environments on the planet.
Home to thousands of species from spider crabs searching for food on the forest floor
to lobsters hiding beneath the canopy.
Every part of this remarkable forest is
used by the creatures here
the fronds are home to tiny animals like
these sea furs filtering plankton
from the water
and a place to find food for grazers
like this top shell,
like coral reefs the kelp forest create an oasis of life wherever it grows.
It's the perfect place to lay eggs this
mermaid's purse has a baby cat shark
growing inside
and this is a squid nursery, each finger-like capsule has more than a
hundred young squid inside
We're discovering these underwater
forests are vital, not just for sea life,
but in climate change, reaching up towards the Sun the kelp
fronds lock up vast amounts of carbon as
they grow.
Ian Hendy is an expert on kelp forests,  globally kelp forests will draw down more than 600 million tons of carbon
that's roughly twice the amount
of carbon that the UK emits per year.
What that's doing is reducing climate
change. They stabilize the sediments, they
can actually mitigate or reduce wave
energy by up to 70% and as a consequence
of that carbon being drawn into the kelp
the kelp will pump out lots of oxygen so
it oxygenates the water and creates a
whole biodiversity for lots of wildlife to survive.
Once these magnificent
forests extended all along the Sussex
coast from Selsey to Brighton, today only
pockets of this life generating kelp remain,
casualties of changing fishing
practices which have damaged the kelps habitat.
 
and other factors like dumping sediment
close to shore which block the kelp's light
limiting its ability to grow.
Now an exciting plan to regenerate the
Sussex kelp forests led by the Sussex
Inshore Fisheries and Conservation
Authority is getting started.
The kelp forests along the Sussex coast and particularly the West Sussex coast used
to be very extensive and very dense and
that's changed in the late 1980s, early
1990s to the point where today there is
almost nothing left
and it's taken place out of sight and
that makes me feel sad.
What we're trying to do is bring
that back
there's a huge reduction in the presence
of fish in this area and we think some
of that can be attributed to the loss of
this important habitat, we see it with
cuttlefish, we see it with lobsters and
over the last few years we can see a
reduction in black sea bream capture as
well. If we want to see the kelp come back,
which is what we want, then we're going
to have to give it a chance.
So our plan is to push trawling away from the coast, out to four kilometres, where the kelp
forests used to be. We really need these
near shore habitats to be thriving so
that the fish can thrive and we think
this will give the kelp forest the
chance to regenerate, to re-grow, to restore it.
If we are successful with this restoration project in Sussex
the amount of marine wildlife is going
to generate again will be just fantastic
We need these kelp forests, we need them
to purify the water, we need them to have
the nursery function back and we need
them to reduce localized areas of
climate change as well.
We can't do this without you, visit sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/helpourkelp
 
To do something as dramatic as this as as far-reaching as this
would would make me feel very proud
