Underwater deforestation is mobilizing fishermen and scientists

"The island doesn't leave you alone," says Marcos Callejas, sitting on a seaweed bale on Santa Maria Island with a portable speaker on his lap playing loud trap music. Although the price of seaweed has dropped by two-thirds in the past couple of months, from $1.50 to just 50 cents a kilo, Marcos is not complaining. He’s relieved that there aren't as many poachers on the island as when the price was at its peak. "Last December this was full of motorboats. From the shore, we could see how they would go out to sea to cut the giant kelp, but we couldn't do anything about it," he says.

"This island is blessed," he says. Marcos tends to throw out those kinds of short, deep sentences that don't seem to fit the music he is listening to. Today is a day that underscores what he says -- there is a strong wind and ocean swells. What for other fishermen is bad weather, for the seaweed gatherers is a blessing. With the swells, the largest algae are released from the underwater forests and float ashore. Today there is so much giant kelp on the beach that there is a lack of hands. In fact, the group formed by Marcos and six other people will not be able to collect it all and in the afternoon the sea will take the seaweed back. The sea gives, the sea takes.

The work of the seaweed gatherers on Santa Maria Island, off the coast of the Atacama Desert, starts at 7 in the morning. They kayak across to the island and then walk for about half an hour to the seaweed beds, small bays where the precious giant kelp — the reason they decided to settle in this desolate place where there is nothing but stone, salty wind and lizards — washes ashore.

Most of them arrived more than 10 years ago and got hooked. They settled on the coast with a view of Santa Maria Island in a village of about 40 wooden houses. Dogs abound, no one wears sunscreen and almost everyone, even the children, are expert swimmers and rowers. Most of the dogs were not brought by the residents. They are abandoned by their owners from a nearby city, Antofagasta. " We end up adopting them, we can't let them die," says Leandra Maluenda, seaweed gatherer and Marcos' partner.

The village where Leandra and Marcos live is called Caleta Errázuriz, and there most of the seaweed gatherers are women. The presidency of the group has, in most cases, been held by a woman and has led to the village being known as "the cove of the matriarchs.”

The first to arrive was Carmen Castillo, who settled down in a tent. Currently, Carmen's daughter, Samira, is the president of the group of seaweed gatherers.

Samira has tanned skin and moves nimbly along the beach despite her advanced pregnancy. Although she is not currently working in seaweed harvesting, she is meeting with authorities. Sometimes, the authorities and some academics treat them as predators because they harvest the giant kelp, she says. Samira wants the government to provide them with a management area so they can work without criticism or reprisals.

Samira insists the seaweed gathers are the most interested in conserving the resource. "When they cut it, it takes a long time for the giant kelp to grow and we are left without algae for a long time... how can we want it to end if this is what we live on?”

Giant kelp are long stems of between six and thirteen feet, joined by a holdfast that collectors call a "head.” A wet “head,” the anchor of the plant, can weigh about 20 pounds.

"Those heads are a gift from the sea, but they are also quite heavy," says Karen Valeriano, who was the last woman to join the group of gatherers in Caleta Errázuriz.

Karen is Bolivian, "a Bolivian with a sea" as she likes to say. She came to work in Antofagasta five years ago with her partner, from whom she is now separated. She has two daughters.

Before arriving in Chile, Karen had never been to the ocean. And before coming to work at Caleta Errázuriz, she did not know how to row or swim. Now she knows how to row, but she still does not know how to swim. Every morning as she kayaks across to the island, her colleagues watch her and are ready to help if the wind starts to drag her boat out to sea. "This is a free gym,” she says. “There is no coach, but you work out everything: back, arms, glutes.”

She collects giant kelp all morning and spreads it out on the beach. If she didn't spread it out, it would rot. In about three days it is dry enough to tie into bales. Then the bales are dragged to the side of the island where the boats can enter – hard work but cheaper because transporting the bales in boats from the island to the cove can be costly. The giant kelp is then sold to transporters who take it to grinders. And from the grinders it is sold to the exporters.

Companies in China convert the giant kelp into alginate, a thickening product that is used in the food industry, drugs, cosmetics, and even in mining.

"We consume alginate from the moment we get up and use shampoo in the shower to the moment we have a beer at night," says Julio Vásquez, a marine biologist and researcher at the Catholic University of the North, who has been called "the evangelist of giant kelp.” Vásquez says that few are aware of how important algae are in daily life or of all the effort behind something that seems as commonplace as the texture of a hair conditioner.

But as kelp forests are endangered, it will end up affecting not only the algae but other marine species. "Kelp forests are shelter, food, protection, and spawning areas for mollusks, fish and crustaceans. They are like buildings for humans, which, if you destroy them, you leave all the inhabitants homeless," he explains.

Vásquez believes that sustainable management works best in management areas. That is, areas given in concession to fishermen's associations where they take care of their resources, avoiding overexploitation. In Chile, these areas already exist and they have led to a lower level of overexploitation. "This way it is possible to extract algae in an orderly manner. For example, we recommend to the fishermen that they extract one giant kelp plant out of every three, to leave space for new specimens. Thus, the forest can renew itself.”

Chile should pay more attention to current extraction levels and establish how much giant kelp it wants to export, Vásquez says, especially since there are weather phenomena such as El Niño which, if they coincide with current extraction levels, "could leave us without giant kelp for a long time.”

Scientists are exploring the repopulation of the ocean with brown algae to help the recovery of endangered underwater forests. The initiative works with a nature-based solution, using algae that naturally combines with other variants of the same species (chimera). This makes them more resistant to climate change and swells and they would even be able to generate higher biomass. Something like super algae.

Dr. Alejandra González, member of the faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Chile, leads the project. After years of study and domestication of "chimera" algae cultivation, Dr. González, along with her team and four artisanal fishermen's unions, began last year to plant these algae in the management areas that belong to the unions.

They had to gain the trust of the fishermen. "It was a lengthy process because sometimes the academy gets into the communities without involving them, but in this project, they are part of it, and they have helped us a lot with their knowledge in the field to know where it is best to plant,” she said.

Chimera algae and algal reproduction cycle

Chimeric algae have a higher rate of survival, growth and tolerance to increases in temperature and salinity, which makes them an option for repopulating areas highly impacted by overexploitation and may become crucial to mitigate global warming effects.

Fusion can occur between zygote cells, holdfasts, or between holdfast and zygote cells.

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Planting is not easy. The giant kelp grows in high wave areas and that is precisely what makes them so desirable. "By growing in these currents, these algae produce more alginate, because alginate is what allows the elasticity that provides them with resistance to the waves," explains Dr. González.

Raúl Julio is president of a fishermen's association in Totoralillo Norte, a cove located in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile. During the last few years, the fishermen have watched with concern as the giant kelp began to disappear and other species, such as shellfish, were also disappearing. In addition, the swells were becoming more intense.

When Dr. González's group arrived in the cove, Julio admits the fishermen were not immediately convinced. "They started introducing themselves, meeting with us, they said they wanted to combine scientific and local knowledge, and that's when we started to participate in their workshops," Julio recalls.

Four months after planting the first giant kelp plants, which were fastened to the rocks with hook-and-loop fasteners to withstand the intense waves, Julio explains that at least 50% have survived. "We want to continue working with scientists because we would like to be able to grow algae in the future. As fishermen, we also must take care of cultivating and harvesting, so that we are not just predators.”