By: Inessa Chandra

It was one of those little niggles that live in the back of your mind. The first shapes of an idea, blurred around the edges, that you usually tuck in the back pocket of your jeans, forget, and wash away in the laundry.

I started my PhD career with the Marine Biology program at USC last fall. I fell in love with giant kelp in the first few weeks, seeing the importance of giant kelp to California marine biodiversity and economy. I was further excited by the potential of giant kelp for sustainability in everything from food to biofuel.

At some point in my first year, I’d wondered how I could harness genetic diversity in a population of giant kelp and increase a kelp forest’s ecological resilience, making it more likely to recover after a marine heatwave. At some point during my first year, I also thought coconut oil was just as good as butter in baking (it’s not), and both ideas seemed equally doomed to wither in the shadow of better judgment.

In terms of research, better judgment meant a different research topic – the notion that kelp’s molecular sensors for different wavelengths (colors) of light might communicate information about the environment that regulate kelp biological processes like nutrient acquisition or reproduction. Knowing this might add new dimensions to conservation projects or kelp aquaculture. Still, even as I tasked myself with relearning the physics of light (don’t neglect physics, kids – turns out it actually might be useful) and digging through the existing knowledge of light sensors, this half-abandoned idea of genetic diversity and ecological resilience persisted on any scraps of relevant information I happened across.

I was supposed to study the light environment of giant kelp beds at Catalina this summer. I took a scientific diving course in the spring semester, partially in preparation for collecting this data. I planned to survey natural kelp beds around the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina, recreate the conditions I surveyed, and then adjust the different components and see how kelp photosynthesis changed.

It didn’t happen. Quarantine did.

Instead, I was stuck at home with no access to my lab or any field sites. With few other options for research, I checked my back burner only to find a stew had been simmering. Somehow that half-discarded idea had acquired enough information to create a different project. Most prominently, I had the locations where published datasets were publicly available – datasets including satellite-derived estimations of California kelp forests through time, and previous population genetics of giant kelp in the northeast Pacific. You’d be surprised what you can find on the internet.

I asked myself what I could learn from this data. I realized I could see what kelp patches look like through time, and then compare those patch parameters to the patch’s population genetics – specifically different estimates of genetic diversity. What did one have to do with the other? Patch parameters such as patch shape or density could modulate mating opportunities through filtering and altered water flow. These boundaries on mating opportunities could shape the population genetics of the patch. It would only be the start of a project, but I could build on this and eventually connect these spatial parameters and population genetics to ecological resilience of kelp patches.

I’d never done geospatial analyses or really worked with any code to analyze biological information. I had no idea how to use this data and turn it into my project. But as I sat at home scrolling through Covid19 news, the thought dawned on me that I might be sitting there a while. And I realized there’s no better time to learn.