The battle to safeguard vital sea forests on the edge of the world

At the south­ern edge of our plan­et, pum­melled by unre­lent­ing waves, the vast con­ti­nen­tal land­mass span­ning North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca final­ly tapers off and sur­ren­ders to the south­ern oceans. After wind­ing down through Patag­o­nia, with its seem­ing­ly end­less moun­tains and fjords, the land starts to curve east­ward and break apart into islands – as if forced apart by the pow­er of the sur­round­ing seas. Beyond Tier­ra del Fuego and besides a few final out­ly­ing islands, Argentina’s Penín­su­la Mitre marks land’s true end: a sur­pris­ing­ly diverse region of windswept beach­es, rocky coves, car­bon-rich peat bogs, sparse grass­lands and the final few snow-capped moun­tains as the Andes makes its last stand.

“Bat­tered by storms, unpre­dictable winds and strong cur­rents, Penín­su­la Mitre sits at one of the most dan­ger­ous lat­i­tudes for nav­i­ga­tion,” explains Cris­t­ian Lag­ger, Sci­en­tif­ic Direc­tor of Por el Mar. ​“As we sailed towards it, our boats looked like two tiny wal­nut shells float­ing on a rough sea, sur­round­ed by huge moun­tains and high, snow-capped peaks.”

Along­side Par­ley and Mis­sion Blue, Por el Mar is a found­ing mem­ber of Forests of the Sea, our ini­tia­tive to pro­tect and restore kelp for­est ecosys­tems all around the world in line with the 30×30 tar­get pro­posed by the UN Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty to pro­tect 30% of the Earth’s bios­phere by 2030. With its exten­sive kelp cov­er­age and rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine seas, south­ern Argenti­na will be a key region in this multi­na­tion­al effort to pre­serve marine life and help sta­bilise our climate.

Togeth­er with col­leagues at Por El Mar, IDEA/CONICET, CADIC/CONICET and Unplas­ti­fy, Cris­t­ian recent­ly led an 11-strong mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team made up of marine biol­o­gists, oceanog­ra­phers, sci­en­tif­ic divers, pho­tog­ra­phers, doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers and free­d­ivers to the region. They aimed to study kelp forests with a high den­si­ty of macroal­gae (aka kelp) locat­ed along exposed rocky coasts (not closed bays) that hadn’t been pre­vi­ous­ly stud­ied. This made the expe­di­tion logis­ti­cal­ly hard­er, as the team had to sail out from shel­tered areas, con­duct dives to around 15m in rough seas, then return to safer anchor­ages. Beyond explor­ing and research­ing Mitre’s kelp forests, a key goal was to help tell the sto­ry of a place few have heard of and even few­er visit.

“Beneath our sail­boats,” recalls Cris­t­ian, ​“hun­dreds of macroal­gae stretched for miles, reach­ing the sea’s sur­face and form­ing a float­ing marine car­pet. Vis­i­bil­i­ty in the water was over 20m, some­thing unusu­al for the Argen­tine Patag­on­ian region. I also remem­ber the extreme cold that came over me when I first went under – the water was 5ºC! How­ev­er, know­ing that these sites had not been explored by any­one else made me smile. The sen­sa­tion was like enter­ing a por­tal to an unknown dimen­sion, and we felt more and more won­der as we descend­ed. It felt like we were fly­ing among the hun­dreds of huge columns of kelp.”

Sea forests like the ones sur­round­ing Mitre are cru­cial for the health of our oceans and the sur­vival of our plan­et. Stretched like vast green rib­bons along cold­er coast­lines in regions rang­ing from South Africa to Japan, kelp forests cap­ture an esti­mat­ed 4.5 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide each year. They also pro­vide crit­i­cal habi­tat for over 1,500 marine species and remove harm­ful nitro­gen and phos­pho­rus – puri­fy­ing the sur­round­ing sea­wa­ter and help­ing to bal­ance the ocean’s acid­i­ty. Glob­al­ly, it’s esti­mat­ed that the macroal­gal bio­me cov­ers about the same area as the Ama­zon rain­for­est basin, and is like­ly just as productive.

Penín­su­la Mitre’s kelp forests cov­er more than 2,000 hectares on the south­ern­most edge of Argenti­na. They extend along almost the entire coast­line of the penin­su­la and are con­sid­ered by sci­en­tists to be one of the most pris­tine marine ecosys­tems on the planet.

Its sea forests are home to species of macroal­gae like Macro­cys­tis pyrifera, which around Mitre can mea­sure more than 22 metres in height and weigh more than 120 kilo­grams wet. Togeth­er with M. pyrifera, oth­er small­er species of brown macroal­gae, such as Lesso­nia flav­i­cans and L. sear­lesiana, it con­sti­tutes the base and struc­ture of the kelp forests in this area and pro­vides a home for species includ­ing yel­low tubu­lar sponges, colonies of cush­ion-shaped ascid­i­ans, red and green sea urchins resem­bling Christ­mas balls, giant starfish of dif­fer­ent colours, crabs, curi­ous red octo­pus­es and sea lions.

“We are explor­ing one of the last true pris­tine places in the world,” says Por El Mar co-founder Mar­ti­na Sas­so. ​“This is where Charles Dar­win sailed, and if you go down there to Penín­su­la Mitre and you open Darwin’s books, and Humboldt’s books, and you just take your eyes off the page you’re see­ing the exact same land­scape. I don’t know many parts of the world where you can feel this. So many ani­mals aren’t used to the human pres­ence, so they’re real­ly curi­ous and they won’t run away – because they actu­al­ly haven’t seen much of humans.”

On land, Mitre’s vast peat bogs and grass­lands sequester mil­lions of tons of car­bon diox­ide, too – while pro­vid­ing habi­tat for species rang­ing from the Andean con­dor to the (super adorable) gua­na­co: a less­er-known rel­a­tive of the alpaca, lla­ma and vicuña. Clos­er to the sea, the penin­su­la is home to the endan­gered south­ern riv­er otter, which needs dense for­est cov­er near fresh­wa­ter ecosys­tems to sur­vive. Off­shore, the abun­dance of wildlife is clear as you sail out of Ushua­ia and east­wards – leav­ing civ­i­liza­tion behind. This was the route traced by Yago Lange, Parley’s Argenti­na coor­di­na­tor, on a sep­a­rate expedition.

“Mitre is real­ly rich in marine wildlife,” he explains. ​“We saw dol­phins, sea lions, whales and more. Marine wildlife in this region migrates to Antarc­ti­ca for the rich nutri­ents and food. It’s the clos­est point to Antarc­ti­ca, so to be able to help pro­tect it is a huge win for the oceans, and for this bio­di­verse area.”

Yago, Mar­ti­na, Cris­t­ian and the wider team have been work­ing since 2019 to help pro­tect the south­ern parts of Argenti­na, but the long road towards safe­guard­ing Mitre’s frag­ile ecosys­tems dates back even fur­ther. Over thir­ty years ago, Oscar Zanola, the first direc­tor of the End of the World Muse­um, pro­posed the cre­ation of a Cul­tur­al and Nat­ur­al Reserve. Impor­tant laws fol­lowed in the 1990s that set the stage, but it was only late last year that amaz­ing news arrived. After years of com­bined work by local com­mu­ni­ties and NGOs, leg­is­la­tors in Argentina’s Tier­ra del Fuego Province passed a law per­ma­nent­ly pro­tect­ing Penín­su­la Mitre by cre­at­ing a vast 1.2‑million-acre Nat­ur­al Pro­tect­ed Area span­ning both land and sea.

“This new pro­tect­ed area safe­guards Argentina’s biggest marine and ter­res­tri­al car­bon sinks,” Mar­ti­na explains. ​“Of the 10,000 square kilo­me­tres pro­tect­ed by the new law, 6,800 cor­re­spond to the marine part, so this adds a lot to the 15,400 already pro­tect­ed in this coun­try. But as things stand, less than 10% of the sur­face of the con­ti­nen­tal Argen­tine sea is pro­tect­ed – so there’s a long way to go.”

On a glob­al scale, 38% of the world’s world forests have seen reduc­tions in size over the last 50 years. Loca­tions in Cana­da, Green­land and Cal­i­for­nia have seen wor­ry­ing drops, but inves­ti­ga­tions at the region­al scale around Penín­su­la Mitre using satel­lite image sets, aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy and in-situ stud­ies have not shown changes in recent decades to kelp canopy cov­er, den­si­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion. These promis­ing find­ings could offer lessons on how best to pro­tect sea forests in oth­er regions.

“Argen­tine Patag­on­ian region (SW Atlantic) kelp forests are con­sid­ered some of the most unex­plored and lit­tle-stud­ied places in the south­ern hemi­sphere,” says Cris­t­ian. ​“There is still so much to learn about this incred­i­ble ecosys­tem, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing they are high­ly pro­duc­tive sys­tems with enor­mous bio­di­ver­si­ty. Cur­rent­ly, through a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic project that’s also sup­port­ed by Por el Mar, we are work­ing on esti­mat­ing the amount of car­bon these forests cap­ture and store – and how much that rep­re­sents on a glob­al scale. The more we learn from them, the more we realise their enor­mous impor­tance in nat­u­ral­ly mit­i­gat­ing the cur­rent cli­mate cri­sis. His­tor­i­cal­ly, we have under­es­ti­mat­ed the con­tri­bu­tion made by kelp to numer­ous ecosys­tem ser­vices vital to our sur­vival. It’s time to change that!”

One of the main objec­tives is to build on last year’s legal suc­cess and estab­lish a vast 2,900 km cor­ri­dor encom­pass­ing coast­lines and kelp forests in the Provinces of Tier­ra del Fuego and San­ta Cruz. It’s an ambi­tious plan, but it would go a long way towards ensur­ing the health of the region’s oceans – and put Argenti­na firm­ly at the fore­front of glob­al marine con­ser­va­tion efforts. As Yago con­cludes: ​“We, as Argen­tini­ans, have some­thing good to pro­tect, we are a super­pow­er in terms of nature. We have a huge coun­try, so we need to expand our respon­si­bil­i­ty and our way of pro­tect­ing it.”

Find out more about Par­ley for the Oceans, Por el Mar and Forests of the Sea.

Fol­low writer Chris Hather­ill,  illus­tra­tor Lucy Han and pho­tog­ra­phers Jose Reyero and Marko Mag­is­ter on Instagram.

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