They've had success with growing individual plants, but now a team of scientists is taking on a new, far more ambitious underwater project — starting with spreading baby kelp across 7,000 square metres off the Tasmanian coast.
Marine ecologists Scott Bennett and Cayne Layton, along with a team of Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) researchers, spent time in the depths of the Tasman Peninsula last month with the goal of planting enough giant kelp along the reef to cover one-and-a-half football fields.
Giant kelp is the world's largest marine algae which can grow up to 40 metres tall at a rate of up to 50 centimetres a day in ideal conditions, but the vital species is vanishing quickly with no sign of slowing down.
"There's been a lot of work at IMAS over the past several years working on the restoration of giant kelp," said Dr Bennett.
"We've had great success at growing trees like individual plants and now we're sort of scaling that up to try and sort of restore an actual giant kelp forest."
The team spent four years investigating various methods and ways to re-plant the giant kelp.
With the help of tourism operator Eaglehawk Dive Centre and seaweed producer Sea Forest, the project became a reality.
"Climate change fairly and squarely is a leading cause of loss of giant kelp forests in south-east Australia and it's really sort of a combination of effects," said Dr Bennett.
"The project in and of itself is quite labour intensive still in Tassie so we're working on ways to sort of streamline and upscale this.
"We're still in sort of a semi-trial phase, [so] we're trialling different methods for restoration. One is using seated gravel and the other is using twine."
If successful, the project will resemble a natural giant kelp forest, which have declined in Tasmanian waters by over 95 per cent since the 1970s.
Warming ocean temperatures and a strengthening East Australian Current that is driving warm, nutrient-poor water further south are to blame, according to Dr Layton.
"Kelp forests are really important habitats just like trees on land [and] a lot of animals also eat kelp, so they're really the foundation of that environment," he said.
"Giant kelp love cool, nutrient-rich water and historically that was what the water was like in Tassie.
"Unfortunately, with our changing oceanography due to climate change, those water conditions are changing and our waters are becoming warmer and nutrient-poor, and that's really what's driving the loss of our giant kelp forests."
But it is not just about saving the giant kelp species, it is also about restoring everything which calls the habitat home.
"Giant kelp forests are home to a whole bunch of organisms and creatures that we're really familiar with — abalone, crayfish only live in kelp forests," said Dr Layton.
"We're really interested in what other organisms are going to move into that environment and how that forest community [and] ecosystem starts to recover."
The project is still in its early days, and while it is unclear if it will be successful or not, the team is prepared.
"We've got contingencies to deal with that and after the warm summer conditions," said Dr Layton.
"If the plantings in the spring aren't successful then we'll do another round of planting hopefully in autumn and just put a bit more kelp and effort into that patch."
