Killer whales have joined the rare club of animals that can make and use tools, for the first time being observed crafting a kind of brush out of kelp and then using it on fellow pod members. The feat ...

Oceans, rivers and lakes are chockful of thousands of underwater plants and algae collectively described as seaweed. Demand for seaweed — kelp, specifically — has exploded as scientists have confirmed ...

New environmental DNA (eDNA) tools can accurately and inexpensively quantify kelp-derived biomass in sediments below commercial kelp farms, according to research published in PLOS One. The new study, ...

In order to help monitor and protect the endangered Southern Resident orcas in the Salish Sea, scientists are turning to help from a canine coworker. A scent-detection dog named Eba sniffs out ...

"The nutritional quality, or the amount of nutrients in the kelp tissue seems to be changing," said the study's lead author Heili Lowman, a biogeochemist with the University of Nevada, Reno, who ...

There's a rallying cry at various bays and beaches up and down the West Coast; it's "Help the kelp!" The towering brown seaweed with the floating bulb on top is in steep decline. That's alarming ...

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was co-published with Scientific American and supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. MONTEREY — It’s 1988. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is four years old, and so am I.

Sea stars could play a key role in protecting threatened kelp forests, according to new research from University of Oregon and Oregon State University scientists. The study, published Wednesday in ...

To most beachgoers, seaweed is, well, just a weed. But to Chloe Chan its an introduction to the community of kelp foragers Last weekend, I returned to one of my favorite places: Mavericks Beach on the ...