The Palos Verdes Peninsula is famous for being the home to numerous species of birds and wildlife, and the waters around the Peninsula also feature an array of dolphins, sea birds, and even sea otters. Before the 1950s, there were thick and healthy giant kelp forests around the oceans there, which were the favorite habitat of otters and kelp fish. Unfortunately, those kelp forests suffered a setback, but have recently regrown. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just confirmed that the Palos Verdes Peninsula is once again home to the furry and awesome otters. It isn’t human pollution or activity that killed of so much of the kelp originally – on the contrary, sea urchins on the Palos Verdes Shelf began overpopulating and killed off the natural kelp forests.
Happily, humans helped fix the problem by removing urchins and now the kelp has had a chance to regrow as high as 25 feet. In a few more years, this will be a major snorkeling and scuba-diving destination. To get an idea of what these Palos Verdes kelp forests are like, here’s a video from an actual diver’s experience:
