While scientists are still pinning down if and how kelp farming might be a climate change champion, the case is further complicated by the fact that climate change itself could throw a wrench into the growing industry. Kelp is relatively sensitive to temperature: in Australia, a marine heat wave in 2010–11 devastated kelp forests. In 2012, giant kelp forests in that country’s southeast became the first endangered marine community listed under the Australian government’s biodiversity conservation act. In British Columbia, encrusting animals called bryozoans have been whitening kelps in warm-water years — an effect researchers started noticing in 2015.

Can the industry survive if warming waters bring ever-more and ever-longer disease outbreaks?