7” x 12” or 16” x 32” fine art print on Hahnemuhle rag paper. Edition of 15 or 10.

Two juvenile Nereocystis luetkeana with merged holdfast. These two baby bull kelp were collected in springtime from the shore of Fort Funston, the beach at the south end of San Francisco where I walk often. They were brought back to my studio, and scanned while still fresh. Spring is when one often finds baby Nereocystis on the shores, at the water’s edge, their tiny delicate bladder and blades golden in the sunshine. They are a sign that this annual species is starting its cycle afresh. The sporophyte stage of growth begins in later winter/early spring and in a matter of months, by June or July, a mature bull kelp’s stipe and bladder have reached 60 feet (18 metres) or so to the surface when the stipe will stop growing and growth will continue from the base of the blades where they emerge from the bladder. By late summer dark brown sori, or spore patches, will develop on the blades. They will fall away in late summer, each cluster of millions of spores floating to the rocky bottom to disperse and germinate into female and male gametophytes that will produce egg and sperm. This mysterious sexual phase of the giant bull kelp is microscopic and fertilization happens beneath the waves in the roughest winter weather.