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Nikolas Kappas

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nkmarinescience

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Macro images

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Golden Forest

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Reaching toward the sky, the air-filled tips of Fucus vesiculosus (bladder wrack) lift the fronds toward the surface and subsequently, the light. Whenever the sun catches the water just right, the Fucus meadow at our sampling site in the western Baltic Sea is bathed in a warm golden glow. On one of our last field trips, I couldn't resist taking a picture. It is always a highlight to see one of the Baltic Sea's most important habitat-forming species in all its amber glory, rather than encountering it washed up on the beach and regarded as little more than a nuisance by tourists. During fieldwork, people often approach us to ask whether we are dealing with the local "algae problem." I wish they could see these macroalgae the way I do: not as withered debris on the shoreline, but as a submerged golden grove providing shelter and habitat for countless species.