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By Jan Freiwald, Executive Director, Reef Check Foundation
In January, my colleague Rodrigo Beas Luna, a marine ecologist working in Baja California, Mexico, and I traveled to Chile to collaborate with OCEANA Chile. It was the start of our joint Chile-California collaboration to launch a Reef Check kelp forest monitoring program for artisanal fisheries in three fishing villages, or Caletas, in the Atacama Desert along the Northern Chilean coastline. Over the past few years, the Chile California Council, OCEANA Chile, and Reef Check have worked together to develop a framework for monitoring Chile’s kelp forests. After multiple meetings in both Chile and California, this trip marked the exciting on-the-ground kickoff of the program.
Our 10-day expedition began in Santiago, where our team gathered before heading north to the Caletas in Northern Chile. OCEANA Chile has worked in Northern Chile for many years alongside local fishing communities to develop suitable practices to conserve the ocean and maintain local livelihoods.
When we arrived in Punta de Choros and Apolillado, we could not have hoped for a more welcoming reception. The fishers and community leaders eagerly shared their knowledge of the local kelp forests and fishing practices. In this region, fishers harvest kelp, primarily of the Lessonia species, an understory kelp that grows up to eight feet tall. They collect kelp either from drift kelp that has washed ashore or by diving to extract the plants from the reef using crowbars. The harvested kelp is then dried and exported to be processed for alginate production. In addition to kelp, the primary fishery here targets Loco (Concholepas concholepas), a carnivorous snail, also referred to locally as Chilean abalone despite not being related to true abalones.
For Rodrigo and me, we quickly realized that diving in the southern hemisphere kelp forests along the South American west coast would be a fascinating experience because it was strangely familiar. While the species differ from those on the North American west coast, they fulfill remarkably similar roles in the kelp forest ecosystem. It felt like watching a familiar play performed by a different cast of characters. As we conducted our first surveys, we identified key species of kelp, invertebrates, and fish that will form the foundation of Reef Check’s future monitoring efforts.
At the next Caleta, fishers joined us underwater to demonstrate firsthand how they harvest kelp. Working in teams, hookah divers dislodge the kelp and hoist it onto their boats until they are filled and ready to offload at a nearby bay. We exchanged ideas, built relationships, and explored ways to collaborate on long-term kelp forest monitoring. There was strong interest in connecting fishers and communities in Chile with those in Baja California, Mexico—where we have established citizen science programs—fostering an international exchange of knowledge and best practices. Everyone agreed that a workshop, bringing together fishing communities from Chile, Baja, and California would be a beneficial next step to expand collaborations and further strengthen partnerships.
By the end of our trip, we had gathered valuable data on the region’s kelp forest species and a deeper understanding of the needs and capacities for community-led monitoring. This information will guide the development of monitoring protocols and training materials that we are now creating. Our goal with the program is to help empower the local communities to monitor their kelp forests and support sustainable fisheries. We are eager to return to Chile to build on these relationships and contribute to the conservation of its incredible ecosystem, ensuring that both the environment and the communities that depend on it can thrive for generations to come.
