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Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) is the majestic kelp that grows up to sixty feet in one season, to reproduce and be washed away by winter storms each year. It is the signature species making up the vastly productive kelp forests of the Northern Pacific coastline from Central California through Northern California, the Pacific Northwest ...
Bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) is vital to the health of marine ecosystems because it provides a healthy variety of biodiversity. Kelp forests provide numerous animals with nutrients and habitat, including kelp crabs, red sea urchins, kelp greenling, kelp perch, and Pacific herring.
Bull kelp is an annual seaweed — meaning it grows from a spore to maturity within a single year. It grows quickly, sometimes 10 inches (25.4 cm) in one day. Bull kelp have reproductive patches (sori) of spores, which, upon maturity, are heavy enough to drop to the ocean floor.
Bull kelp is a common name for the brown alga Nereocystis luetkeana which is a true kelp in the family Laminariaceae. Species in the genus Durvillaea are also sometimes called "bull kelp", but this is just a shortening of the common name southern bull kelp.
Giant kelp and bull kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera and Nereocystis luetkeana, respectively), hereafter kelp, are large, golden-brown, habitat-forming algae inhabiting rocky shores in the Northeast Pacific Ocean (both species) and for giant kelp, around the world at temperate and sub-polar latitudes.
The most common kind, and the largest, in Puget Sound is Bull Kelp. Bull Kelp is easily recognized by its very long stipe (stalk), up to 30 meters or more in length, extending from the holdfast that attaches it to the bottom to a floating hollow bulb that may be over 10 centimeters in diameter.
Nereocystis luetkeana has the appearance of a bull whip, giving this kelp its common name. Distinctive Features: Nereocystis luetkeana is a large brown kelp that attaches itself to rocks with a holdfast made of many finger like projections, collectively referred to as haptera.