Sam Starko
Heat Resistance
Although Samuel grew up on the Canadian coast, he didn’t fall in love with kelp forests until his early adulthood when he began learning about them in the classroom. Sam’s kelp journey began with trying to understand their evolution.
During his PhD at the University of British Columbia, he used DNA-based approaches to examine where kelp came from, how they evolved and how different species are related to each other. Then everything changed: during 2014-2016 Northeast Pacific Marine Heatwave (aka “The Blob’“) Sam witnessed large-scale declines in kelp forests, and changed his focus to the impacts of climate change on kelp forests. Sam is currently a Forrest Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, studying what factors allow some kelp populations to be more resilient to warming and other climate change-associated drivers. Follow Sam for more about his work.
