Got Kelp?

Most people probably think of sea kelp as something that washes up on the beach and attracts flies. For SF State graduate student Matt Edwards, kelp led him not only to a thesis topic, but an award-winning discovery.

Edwards received an honorable mention from the Western Society of Naturalists for his recent discovery of a kelp's (Desmarestia) life history stage.

While working on his thesis at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, a seaside extension of six cooperating California State Universities, Edwards studied the plant through more than three years of diving and conducting tests in Still Water Cove in Monterey.

Dr. Mike Foster, professor of science at Moss Landing, said the discovery is significant because it explained how Desmarestia maintained itself, and that the findings could be used as a model to learn about other organisms' life histories.

"It's the first time it was found out how plants that just appear occasionally (in the ocean) -- what they do with the rest of their lives," Foster said.

Edwards, who received his undergraduate degree in aquatic biology at UC Santa Barbara, is also an assistant instructor for the research diving lab at Moss Landing. Although he started his graduate program in 1992, he was able to extend his research period for a year.

Desmarestia blooms in the spring and dominates the ocean floor after the more common giant kelp gets ripped out by rough waters in the winter, Edwards said. His thesis was to discover if the plant had a microscopic life history that occurred over the winter and to identify its life history stage.

"I figured out a way to sterilize the ground of the ocean," he said. "I built these little tents, drilled a whole in the bottom of the ocean and installed the tents. They actually seal to the bottom and are water tight. I poured bleach in them, killing everything inside the tent."

He installed the tents in February before the giant kelp was removed, and took them down a few weeks later. By April, no Desmarestia grew where the tents were -- but did in adjacent areas, he said.

"Any new growth came from microscopic life history stages that were on the ground before the sterilization," he explained.

Edwards has been contacted by research groups interested not only in continuing his research, but in using the testing methods he invented.

"I also figured out a way to stain the plants with florescent ink. I put the plants on glass slides, and put them out in the field to monitor them. I brought them back into the lab, put a light on them and identified what they were," he said

Next September he will most likely be starting a doctorate program at UC Santa Cruz doing similar research, and said he eventually wants to teach. He said others foresaw his future in this type of work long before now.

"My parents said I would do this since the second grade," he said, "but I was committed by my freshman year in college."

[ Golden Gater Online November 7, 1995 ]

[ back to top ]