ALUMNI STORIES – MARINE INDUSTRIES
Forests of the future How seaweeds are paving the way for a blue revolution.
At first glance, seaweeds may not appear futuristic,
Just a handful of years after that first encounter, when
but they hold the key to restoring marine habitats and
Cayne returned for his PhD, he found the giant kelp
could form the basis of hi-tech industries for Tasmania
forests had dwindled, and just 18 months into his field
and beyond.
work they were gone from Fortescue. The reason was an
When alumnus Dr Cayne Layton (PhD 2018) first scubadived at Fortescue Bay on the Tasman Peninsula on holidays from the mainland in 2010, he marvelled at the
increase in warmer, nutrient-poor waters from the East Australian Current reaching Tasmania as a result of climate change.
region’s giant kelp forests. He would remember the way
When Cayne’s PhD supervisor, marine ecologist
the light filtered through, illuminating rich ecosystems
Professor Craig Johnson (BSc 1980 Hons), was a university
of lobsters, crayfish and endemic species such as the
student in Tasmania, the giant kelp forests were even
leafy seadragon.
more extensive. Craig’s mapping research has shown a
“There was the feeling of being very small, like being in a fish tank, with kelp that was 10, 20 and 30 metres tall,”
decline of more than 95 per cent along the State’s East Coast in recent decades.
said Cayne, who went on to do his PhD on the more
But there is help at hand, with new research by Cayne
common ‘golden kelp’ through the University
and Craig finding naturally occurring warm-tolerant
of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic
strains of giant kelp. These strains of ‘super kelp’ have
Studies (IMAS).
been successfully raised in the IMAS laboratory and planted out in areas where giant kelp once grew.
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