East Coast Canada

On Canada’s Atlantic coast, kelp conservation is shifting from study to early action as ocean warming accelerates. Universities and NGOs are testing seeded substrates, including green gravel, while genetics work assesses whether local kelp can adapt. Teams are improving regional maps and models so kelp can be planned at management scales. A major bottleneck is slow permitting built for infrastructure, not habitat recovery. Opportunity is to modernize permitting and integrate kelp maps into marine spatial planning and connectivity planning.

View Metrics

Alexis Savard-DrouinKylee LightbodyKathleen MacGregor + 2

People living within 50km of kelp forests:

2,697,080

GDP(B) within 50KM of Kelp:

$88.14 billion

Ocean Warming Rate by 2100 (°C):

3.9 °C

KM2 of Kelp:

112,541

Key Species:

Saccharina latissima

Laminaria digitata

Alaria esculenta

Kelp forests are the quiet architects of coastal productivity. Protecting and restoring them is not a niche concern—it is central to rebuilding fisheries, buffering shorelines, and sustaining livelihoods across Atlantic Canada.

Key Developments

Across Canada’s East Coast, kelp conservation is shifting from isolated research to more applied experimentation. Universities and NGOs are leading studies ranging from green gravel trials exploring scalable outplanting, to genetic research assessing the adaptive potential of local kelp strains. Researchers across coastal restoration fields—including eelgrass, oyster reefs, salt marshes, and kelp forests—are building a network to address shared bottlenecks, including lengthy permitting timelines and the challenge of scaling restoration techniques. While restoration remains largely in the research phase, it is supported by ecological studies documenting long-term community change in kelp-dominated systems, including shifts linked to warming, invasive species, and the emergence of alternative ecosystem states. Because Eastern Canada is a warming hotspot, understanding and incorporating kelp trajectories into marine management planning will be critical.

Key Opportunities

Eastern Canada has a strong research foundation on kelp resilience and drivers of ecosystem change, including ocean climate variability (Scheibling and Gagnon 2009; Frey and Gagnon 2015), sea urchin grazing (Gagnon et al. 2004; Lauzon-Guay and Scheibling 2007), and invasive species (Caines and Gagnon 2012). However, this ecological knowledge must be more directly integrated into conservation interventions. Efforts to detect and map kelp forests at management-relevant scales—across decades and tens of km²—are already underway (St-Pierre and Gagnon 2020), generating insights into broad-scale distribution, key processes, and the ability to model kelp trajectories under climate change (St-Pierre and Gagnon 2025). These maps can support marine spatial planning, for example by adjusting MPA boundaries to maintain connectivity among kelp patches, or by targeting upstream pressures at the land–sea interface. Permitting remains a major bottleneck. Because restoration projects are processed under provincial wharf repair permits, pilot projects are limited and approvals are slow. Restoration-specific permitting would streamline approvals and help jumpstart projects. As restoration expands, community-facing programmes could also help build stronger local connections to kelp forests and coastal ecosystems.

What Has Worked To Accelerate Action

Momentum in Eastern Canada has grown through the steady accumulation of practical knowledge, mapped coastlines, seed banks, and pilot sites developed by a widening network of government and academic researchers, fishers, and communities. In Newfoundland, emerging First Nations–university partnerships are engaging Indigenous communities across planning, implementation, and dissemination, while ensuring communities retain control over their knowledge and data (OCAP® principles). Large, publicly accessible datasets on kelp distribution created for marine regulators such as Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) are also available online (borealisdata.ca/dataverse/rhodoliths). Ocean advocacy is also expanding through online educational platforms designed for the public and coastal practitioners.

Key Services

Responses

Capacity