Lecture Archive: Steven Manley

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Posted: November 19, 2014

Lecture date: July 22, 2014. Dr. Steven Manley discussed Kelp Watch 2014, a campaign to detect Fukushima-released radioactivity along the West Coast of North America.

Kelp Watch 2014 (KW14) is a scientific campaign that uses the giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) as a coastal detector of Fukushima-released radioisotopes predicted to arrive to the West Coast of North America via the ocean currents by mid-2014. KW14 will also provide data on the extent these radioisotopes have entered our west coast kelp forest ecosystem. KW14 involves more than forty scientists and educators from thirty-three different academic and government institutions, and non-profit educational organizations.

What started out as a California centric campaign, with twenty-eight California sites designated for sampling, has now expanded to a total of forty-two sites ranging from Kodiak Island, Alaska to Baja Mexico. Additional sites exist in Chile, Hawaii and Guam. The rationale, scope and logistics of this truly collaborative project are presented, along with initial results. The biology of giant kelp and what makes it an ideal sentinel organism for this study are also discussed.

Dr. Steven Manley has been a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at California State University, Long Beach, for over twenty-five years. Dr. Manley is one of the faculty members who contributes to the marine biology program. Dr. Manley received his Ph.D. in biology from UCLA and was a Sr. Research Fellow at Caltech’s Kerckhoff Marine Lab where he studied kelp physiology with the famous kelp ecologist Dr. Wheeler North. His particular research interest in the area of seaweed and phytoplankton halogen biochemistry, and kelp physiology. He is the originator and coordinating scientist of Kelp Watch 2014.

Video Posted: November 19, 2014 | Running time: 55:52

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