Data Now Available from the 2024 Kelp Forest Monitoring Season

Reef Check’s Kelp Forest Monitoring Program continues to expand with 2024 being our biggest year yet! In 2024, we completed more than 190 surveys in California, Oregon, Washington, Baja California, and British Columbia. Since data collection began in 2006, Reef Check has conducted almost 1,900 surveys. All data is now available through our Data Request Form.

Additionally, over the past year, Reef Check staff has been hard at work formatting the kelp forest monitoring data into easy-to-use formats, so that scientists, managers, and members of the public can quickly and easily analyze our dataset to get a picture of the health of our kelp forests and of the numerous species who depend on them. The dataset is available in its raw form of species counts by transect, and summarized by survey with mean values for each species. For more information on export formats, as well as our data management procedures, see the Reef Check Data Management document.