HUGE INSIGHT INTO SOUTHERN OCEAN

THE giant kelp forests of Tasmania’s West Coast – mostly out of sight in wild waters – will be seen by a much broader audience as part of the ABC TV special Southern Ocean Live.

The live program airs on Tuesday at 8.30pm.

Along with the live shows, a number of video packages will be available, including one featuring Tasmania and the work of Emma Lee. Tasmania’s West Coast has some of the greatest underwater forests in the world.

It’s a hauntingly beautiful place and Dr Lee says it is a habitat under threat.

Giant kelp forests are fragile: they can only grow to depths of 30m and require cool waters with high nutrient levels and a rocky sea floor for their gnarled holdfasts to cling to.

Tasmania is one of the few places worldwide with the ideal conditions for Macrocystis, along with New Zealand, the American continents and South Africa.

But climate change has taken its toll. As of 2017, just 5 per cent of the original Tasmanian kelp forests remained.

For the Aboriginal community in Tasmania, the sea is women’s business, and so their relationship with the kelp forests – and all the species that call the kelp home – is strong and has played a central role in cultural recovery.

Aboriginal researcher Dr Lee is a trawlwulwuy woman from tebrakunna country.

Her work reveals climate change could see much more of her peoples’ heritage lost to warming seas.

Southern Ocean Live will be hosted by Hamish Macdonald and Ann Jones.

They will be joined by marine scientists Sheree Marris, Lucas Handley and Dean Miller who will be reporting, from under the water, the remarkable stories of the creatures found in the Southern Ocean off Australia.