When you first hear of the fearsome dragons of the kelp forests, I’m sure you imagine us as sea serpents, flowing in sinuous wave between towering fronds. You imagine our teeth, striking from the dark between foliage and foam; our scales slick and smooth against the water’s pull.

But we are nothing like you imagine.

And while you are right to be wary, your reasoning swims astray.

Imagine a bubble of foam, if you will; the way it bridges water and complex hydrocarbon, constructs something more than its constituent parts. We are akin to that bubble.

If you spent years hunting us through the dense green, if you cut every frond and pulled it from the deep, you would not find us within. We are the foam on the frond, individually microscopic, but capable of acting with one mind, one will to protect our habitat.

And when our kelp is threatened, our ire raised, we do not swarm in the shape of a serpent, nor hunt within our canopy. We rise as one, a many-scaled effigy of overlapping leaves which bursts from the surface and rides the updraft.

With a single thought, we soar.

Our will is legion, and when we swoop upon the invaders with bubbling roar and the thunderous rustle of a thousand fronds, they will flee, carrying tales of monsters from the deep.