Underwater Octo-Condos Offer Beacon of Hope for Goleta Kelp Beds

Former 1st District County Supervisor Das Williams Secures $10,000 Grant for Kelp Restoration Project, Goleta Contributing $5,000

By Callie Fausey Thu Jan 09, 2025 | 12:30pm

The Goleta coastline is the target of a new housing project. But it’s not for humans.

This planned, underwater apartment complex will, ideally, host a community of two-spot octopi. The purpose? Restoring the historic kelp beds that once grew out of the bay’s sandy bottom.

As one of his final actions before leaving office, former 1st District County Supervisor Das Williams secured a $10,000 grant for the kelp restoration project, which the City of Goleta is “matching” with a $5,000 contribution.

The Parent Plant Plan

When Goleta Beach began eroding in the early 2000s, two men sought a potential solution.

If they could only bring back the underwater forest of giant kelp that once grew in the bay off Goleta Beach park, they thought, it would cushion the waves’ impact on the sand and minimize erosion (to put it in less-than-scientific terms).

These men — Bob Kiel, the chief engineer at the Seattle Aquarium, and Greg Christman, a Santa Barbara–based architect — grew up in the area, before the coast’s kelp forest was decimated by a particularly intense El Niño in 1983.

“We never really paid much attention to the kelp beds along our coastline other than when diving and surfing,” Christman recounted to the Independent. By the time they grew up, though, it was gone.

In 2003, they were alarmed by the drastic erosion of the shoreline at Goleta Beach and wanted to do something to help protect it.

Long story short, the childhood friends followed through with their theory that restoring kelp may help counteract beach erosion and benefit marine life, and the project gained the sponsorship of the Beach Erosion Authority for Clean Oceans and Nourishment (BEACON).

Over the course of the next decade, the pair went through phases of trial and error creating and installing granite columns in the bay to give kelp a “toehold” to grow on. By 2016, they had installed around 200 of these columns.

But they faced a kelp-eating foe: crabs. The columns by themselves were ineffective and defenseless to these crustaceans.

And what better way to counteract this problem than with nature’s solution? Move up a level in the food chain, and the California two-spot octopus comes into play. The pair created octo-condos, where octopi could seek shelter along the otherwise barren seafloor, protecting them from predators and giving them access to a crab buffet right outside their “front door.”

They started by installing 25 “octo-condos” — basically just hollow granite balls attached to the kelp columns — in November 2018, and by December, 20 of those had a resident octopus, each with crab remnants littering their front yards and supporting several healthy kelp plants.

Juvenile kelp anchored to and growing on a worm tube. | Credit: BEACON

A New Approach

This kelp restoration project had a promising start, but, besides BEACON’s essential help with costs and permitting, it was primarily funded and executed by Kiel and Christman.

“Our wives hated us,” Christman said with a laugh. “And we both have full-time jobs, so we can only do this when we have extra time on weekends, or when Bob is here from Seattle.”

Christman explained that they attempted to get federal grant funding, but they were unsuccessful. “Those go to universities and big research projects — not a couple of guys.”

The project ultimately stalled for a time. However, with the new grants from the county and the City of Goleta, Christman has hope for their plans to install 50 new-and-improved octo-condos across the bay by next year.

“The intention is to revive the project,” said Williams, who even dove with Kiel and Christman a few times in the past to see the project for himself. “Kelp could restore the ecosystem at Goleta Beach and even has some potential to protect the shoreline, and I couldn’t let a brilliant idea like this languish.”

Since its humble beginnings, the project has shifted from installing artificial columns for kelp growth to focusing on building housing for octopi. They have removed around 100 of the former columns, while leaving the original octo-condos.

Former 1st County Supervisor Das Williams, who secured funding for the kelp restoration project as one of his final acts before officially leaving office, previously dove with project founders Bob Kiel and Greg Christman to see the growing kelp plants for himself. | Credit: BEACON

The new aim is to support the kelp’s natural growth on what are called “worm tubes,” or tubes that are formed by underwater worm secretions, that serve as an anchor point for kelp.

Worm tubes are what the kelp originally grew on before being destroyed, and unable to recover, in the 1980s.

“These sand kelp are called the sequoias of the Pacific — they’re so huge,” Christman said. “And they start on worm tubes. The octopi are allowing the kelp to recruit on worm tubes while they are tending the garden, if you will.”

The next steps include BEACON’s renewal of the test site’s five-year lease with the California State Lands Commission and the completion of a scientific peer review to support the expansion of the project scope and footprint in Goleta Bay, according to BEACON’s website.

To put it simply, Christman explained, step one is getting permission, step two is buying the necessary materials, and step three is making the new octopus “cylinders” (which are bigger than the previous housing model) and figuring out how to get them on the seafloor.

And while studies have shown that severe storms erode beaches equally whether kelp beds are present or not, “the re-establishment of a kelp bed in Goleta Bay is considered an environmental benefit to marine life as well as a recreational opportunity and is consistent with BEACON’s mission,” according to BEACON’s website.

“We have very high hopes, after seeing how the initial octo-columns did, not only are we first-hand witnesses, but kelp experts have said, ‘These guys have figured it out,’” Christman said. “It’s not about adding structure; it’s about adding a predator to help the kelp recruit naturally.”