Just realized people keep saying the ocean is fine because it looks blue from the beach

I grew up near Monterey Bay and the kelp forests used to be thick, now they're patchy. Folks see the surface and think nothing's wrong, but the 2014 heatwave killed off a huge chunk of it and it hasn't come back right. How do you explain that the problem is mostly under the water where they can't see it?

4 comments

4 Comments

jessica1302mo agoOG Member

Remember the blob? That warm water mass off the coast basically cooked the kelp from below while everyone was looking at a pretty blue surface.

max_torres442mo ago

Totally, that blob was wild. Saw the same thing happen with some tide pools near me (they just went silent and empty for a full year).

nguyen.lily2mo ago

That silent year sounds like a total reset.

emma_flores24d ago

And what's wild is this isn't just in the ocean, you know? I see these quiet resets happen all the time in my neighborhood. Like that one coffee shop that everyone thought was dead, closed for months with a sign saying "remodeling." Then it reopened and suddenly it's packed every morning with people who forgot it existed. Or the garden in my backyard that looked completely brown and dead after a bad frost, but then spring came and it came back way stronger than before. It's like nature or people or whatever just needs to hit pause sometimes and let things simmer under the surface before they can really come back.

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