Greenland Study Highlights Seaweed Forests as Carbon Stores

Scientists working in Greenland have added weight to an idea coastal researchers have chased for years: large underwater seaweed forests may store far more carbon than earlier models assumed.

Positive News reports that the work focused on kelp ecosystems — fast-growing, anchored to rocky seabeds, and widespread in cold temperate waters. Beyond carbon, these forests shelter fish and invertebrates and can buffer shorelines from wave energy.

For New Zealand, with long coastlines and active marine science community, the finding is a prompt rather than a local study: kelp and other macroalgae are already part of the conversation on blue carbon. The policy question is protection — what gets fished, farmed, or left alone.

Climate solutions won't come from kelp alone. But if a habitat both supports fisheries and holds carbon, it earns a harder look before we treat it as background scenery.

Originally reported by Positive News.