Kelp Forest Monitoring Program: A Massive Team Effort Results in a Record Year

By Dan Abbott, Director of Kelp Forest Program

On December 10th, Reef Check finished their 2025 kelp forest survey season. This was our 20th season surveying kelp forest, and for the first time, we completed over 200 surveys in a season, including our 2,000th survey! This was a monumental effort and we could not have done it without our 250+ amazing volunteer divers who completed roughly 3,000 dives to collect this vital data. They braved cold water, long swims, rough boat rides, difficult shore entries, poor visibility, and heavy surge and current, to measure the health of these amazing ecosystems. Thank you all for your passion and dedication!

This truly was a team effort! In addition to our amazing volunteers we’d like to thank all of our partners from aquariums, non-profits, universities, tribes, and government agencies, who collected data on our behalf. We want to give a huge shout-out to our supporters in the dive community, including all of the dive shops that generously donated air fills to our volunteers so they could complete this work. We’d like to thank all the boats and captains who got us safely to our sites with a special mention to long-time Reef Check supporter Phil Sammet who captained us for almost 30 days this year and donated his boat and time on several occasions. Lastly, we want to thank the California Department of Fish and Wildlife who gave us time on the RV Garibaldi that enabled us to access almost half our sites in Southern California. We could not have done this without all of you!

Finally, we want to thank all our funders who made this work possible including all of our volunteers who went above and beyond volunteering and donated money so we could survey sites that we otherwise would not have been able to! One volunteer in particular deserves special thanks. Louise & Jim Wholey’s generous donation in 2025 enabled us to survey a large number of sites on the Central Coast of California that we otherwise would not have been able to get to. Thank you Louise & Jim, and thank you all!

This impressive effort makes a significant contribution to the conservation and protection of our kelp forests, which are under stress due to multiple, often poorly understood stressors.  In 2025 Reef Check data was used in dozens of scientific papers, reports, and presentations. This data, that we collected over the past 20 years sheds light on the fate of these ecosystems so scientists, managers, and ocean dependent communities can take actions to protect and conserve the ecosystems. A huge thanks to the massive team that worked together to make our ocean healthier. You rock!

Below are messages from our regional managers addressed to their teams. Enjoy reading their highlights of the season. 

Washington
By Shawn Augustine, Volunteer Coordinator

The 2025 survey season has come to an end, and I want to thank everyone who came out and participated in surveys this year, as well as our partners and the boat captains who got us out to some of our sites. We certified 30 new volunteers and recertified 22 returning volunteers who, along with our partners, surveyed 62 sites, including 6 in British Columbia. Special shout-outs to our Rookie of the Year, Sofie Broznowski, who never failed to bring the positive vibes and our Golden Slate winner with 19 survey dives, Michelle Halpin, who stepped up to attend some of our last-minute dives.

Oregon
By Diana Hollingshead, Regional Manager

Thank you for a fantastic 2025 season. We are already starting to plan 2026. Additional sites, more volunteer opportunities, more restoration opportunities, more camaraderie and fun! ORKA (Oregon Kelp Alliance) has put together a snapshot of how Reef Check divers contributed to their work this year.  Be proud of yourselves! You made an impact. 

Northern California
By Ian Norton, Regional Manager

The 2025 Field Season has come to a close and I want to thank you all for your help and camaraderie. A lot of our sites on the North Coast are quite rural, and many of you commuted several hours or more to lend a hand with our annual surveys. Your dedication to helping us collect this important data is greatly appreciated! 

I’d like to congratulate our Golden Slate winners: Morgan Wren and Lauren Nutt with 9 survey dives each! This year, we had a record number of volunteer dive days on the North Coast with 104, a testament to the tenacity of our divers.

Central California
By True Barnes, Regional Manager

Although we started the season with less resources and funding than in typical years, due the tenacity and generosity of our volunteers, we had one of the most productive years ever! This year, we overcame a lack of typical boat diving by using kayaks, DPVs (Diver Propulsion Vehicles), difficult shore entries and swims, as well as some boat-use donations from our friends, captains, and partners. 

However, it was our volunteer Louise Wholey (and her husband, Jim), whose incredibly generous donation allowed us to survey every Reef Check site in the Central Coast including San Luis Obispo which had not been fully surveyed since 2022. Louise also attended some of our most interesting surveys including some deep boat dives, difficult entry shore dives, and two DPV surveys with her daughter Mary. 

This season we completed 49 sites from shore, kayaks, boats and with DPVs, the most ever done on the Central Coast!  Each year, two big awards are given out, the Golden Slate Award for the highest number of volunteer days goes to  Philine Marchetta with 17 Days! And the Rookie of the Year Award for the highest number of volunteer days attended by a brand new goes to Dachuan Zhang with 20 Days! Both divers showed extreme dedication, attending surveys across all three California regions with no discrimination on sites or entry methods.

A final thank you to our partners and boat captains whose contributions in time and resources made this season the success that it was! Special thank you to Rick Rowett, Mike Albers, and of course Phil Sammet, who personally captained us out 27 days this season in Monterey, Half Moon Bay, and Morro Bay!

Southern California
By Jaclyn Mann, Regional Manager

As 2025 comes to a close, I want to take a moment to congratulate you all on another stellar survey season! This year we were able to complete 50 surveys in Southern California, which is quite the feat and is only possible because of your continued commitment to Reef Check’s monitoring program. Thank you for the hours upon hours of hard work you put in this year, the early mornings, and the long drives throughout the region that made all of this possible. You’re all rockstars and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish together next season!

Super special shoutouts to our Golden Slate winners, Jonah Rubash and Svetlana Isaeva, who rarely missed an opportunity to dive with a total of 28 survey days each. Earning an honorable mention is Roland Azurin with 27 survey days. These three divers are absolute workhorses and great mentors to our less experienced surveyors. Congratulations also goes out to our Rookie of the Year, Saam Shams, with 15 survey days. Saam was fully committed to improving his survey skills this year by diving as much as he could and his hard work totally paid off!

2025* Reef Check Data in Action

*using 2024 or earlier data

Scientific reports and papers

• Drivers of spatiotemporal variability in a marine foundation species. Ecological Applications, February 2025. Anita Giraldo-Ospina, Tom Bell, Mark H. Carr, Jennifer E. Caselle
• Kelp in the Salish Sea: Spatial Patterns of Persistence, Loss, and Data Gaps Using a Harmonized Dataset. WWU Graduate School Collection, Spring 2025. Lamai S. Larsen
• How establishing a marine protected area network has shaped community and citizen science along California’s coast. Frontiers in Marine Science, May 2025. Todd A. Harwell, Ryan M. Meyer and Heidi L. Ballard
• Multiscale analysis of zooarchaeological data to reconstruct past kelp forest productivity for the Northern Channel Islands, California U.S.A.. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, May 2025. Jeremy D. McFarland, Amira F. Ainis, Christopher S. Jazwa
• Reef Check Washington Report: The State of Kelp Forests in Puget Sound 2023-25. Reef Check Foundation, June 2025. Jan Freiwald, Jackie Selbitschka, Dan Abbott
• Reef Check Kelp Forest Monitoring California Report 2024. Reef Check Foundation, June 2025. Jan Freiwald, Dan Abbott, Annie Bauer-Civiello
• Developing a Status and Trends Assessment for Floating Kelp Canopies across Large Geographic Areas. Environmental Science & Technology, November 2025. Christina A. Frieder, Tom W. Bell, Helen Berry, Kyle Cavanaugh, Danielle C. Claar, Jan Freiwald, Benjamin Grime, Sara Hamilton, Henry F. Houskeeper, Nicholas Lombardo, Scott Marion, Tristin Anoush McHugh, Gray McKenna, P. Ed Parnell, Pike Spector, Stephen B. Weisberg
• Creating a global kelp forest conservation fundraising target: A 14-billion-dollar investment to “help the kelp”. Biological Conservation, January 2026. Aaron M. Eger, Julia K. Baum, Tom Campbell, Bruno Cevallos Gil, Hannah S. Earp, Annalisa Falace, Jan Freiwald, Sara Hamilton, Steve I. Lonhart, Keith Rootsaert, Makena Åsa Rush, Jasmin Schuster, Brian Timmer, Adriana Vergés
• Synthesis of Existing Data: A report from the 2024-2026 kelp resilience project.  Washington State Department of Natural Resources, December 2025. Claar et al.

Scientific Presentations (Western Society of Naturalists, November, 2025)

• Pycnopa ooza! A case study in the rapid mobilization to document and capture sunflower star recovery. Rachael Karm
• Looking into the crystal ball: Forecasting future kelp hotspots and coldspots in California. A.C. Balbar
• From collapse to comeback: Evaluation combined techniques for rapid kelp forest recovery. T.A. McHugh
• On the road from wasting to recovery: Sunflower sea star eDNA characterization and survivorship studies in California. A. Kidd
• Get to work: Updates on Oregon’s expanding kelp forest restoration program. S.L. Hamilton
• Extreme marine heatwaves onset kelp forest alternative stable states in Baja California, Mexico. J. Bauer
• Eyes on Kelp: Environmental monitoring of Puget Sound bull kelp forests to improve restoration. K.M. Inch
• ROV Surveys within kelp forests and open-source Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to (1) process survey images and (2) extract data. Z. Randell
• Can fish keep supplying micronutrients in changing coastal ecosystems?. P. Filz
• Heatwave Impact on Fish Community Changes in Northern and Central CA. Annie Bauer-Civiello
• SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL VARIATION IN KELP COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE SALISH SEA. Jackie Selbitschka
• Diving for Data: Citizen Science and Oregon Kelp Forest Restoration (poster). Faith Townsend