Taking Inventory: Kelp - Minecraft

Skip to Main Content Deep Dives Written By Duncan Geere Published 8/27/20 Taking Inventory: Kelp

Too fond of it? Sea kelp!

Minecraft’s watery biomes have been dotted with all kinds of new species since the Update Aquatic was released in July 2018. There’s coral, seagrass, dolphins, the bucket of fish (my personal favourite), and much much more. Today, we’re looking at an item that shines in its versatility. It’s kelp.

Kelp was first seen in a clip at MineCon Earth in 2017, and added to the game in the 18w07a snapshot, released in February of 2018. You’ll find it growing below the surface of most oceans, near and around seagrass. Originally it generated all over the place, but it was tweaked shortly afterward to mainly generate in colder ocean biomes. 

It wasn’t easy to implement. Mojang pixel artist Jasper Boerstra explains:

“Kelp is the first plant to utilise a new kind of visual feature: animation. Before, the only things that [were] animated were either particles or the lava/water and some other solid blocks. But we never animated a plant that used transparency.

It would look very unnatural if it didn't move at all underwater. It's okay on land that everything is static because it still looks good, and animating all the land foliage might be too busy in general.

But in the water, you can't see that far, so it's still easy on the eyes. As everything is animated smoothly and wavy, it gives off the calm atmosphere you would expect from being underwater.”

- Jasper

Kelp can be gathered by punching it with your fist or with pretty much any item – it’ll drop instantly. What’s more, all the kelp blocks above the one you break will drop too, making harvesting it a breeze if you aim for the lowest levels. If you don’t like getting wet, you can also buy it from wandering traders.

One gathered, you can place it down again in any water source block or downward flowing water block. And here’s where it gets interesting; when kelp grows into a flowing water block, it’ll turn it into a water source block – making it very easy to create large columns of still water. You can also use it as a scaffolding for underwater building, as blocks can be placed on top of kelp plants.

Kelp makes good compost, with a 30% chance of raising the level of a compost heap by 1, and it can also be smelted in a furnace into dried kelp – which is a food item that restores one unit of hunger and can be eaten extremely fast. About twice as fast as any other food in the game. Competitive eaters, take note!

Image Credit: Gustavo Gerdel // CC BY-SA 4.0

Don’t tell Jasper, but in the real world kelp isn’t actually a plant. It’s a “heterokont” – a species grouping that mostly consists of algae ranging in size from tiny diatoms to enormous giant kelp. 

Kelp evolved at some point between five and 23 million years ago, and it’s one of the fastest-growing species in the world. Some species can grow as much as half a meter a day, reaching a total height of up to 80 meters.

Humans have been hanging out around kelp forests for millennia. During the Stone Age, there’s plenty of archeological evidence that we ate species found in kelp forest habitats. Some researchers even believe that humans reached the Americas primarily by following kelp forests around the Pacific Rim. No, not the movie from 2013 – the actual Pacific Rim.

Today, we’re still pretty reliant on kelp. It’s used in soap and glass production, and a thing called “alginate” made from kelp is used to thicken ice cream, jelly, salad dressings, toothpaste, and some dog foods. It’s also used in dentistry.

So when you’re next swimming around Minecraft’s kelp forests, consider that you’re following in the footsteps of the Stone Age humans who were doing the same thing thousands of years ago.

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