HORNBROOK, Calif. — The Iron Gate Dam, one of four dams on the Klamath River, will be removed in 2023. It will be the largest dam removal in U.S. history.

For Pachomio Feliz, the waters of the Klamath River and Pacific are life. He’s a member of the Yurok Tribe.

“This is our lifeblood," he said. "Without the river, we’d be dead.”

The Klamath River runs from southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in California.

Along the way, there are four dams holding back the river's natural flow. The dams were originally built to produce electricity and regulate water levels on the river. Environmentalists in the area say those dams are harming the river’s health.

“It has huge impacts. It has impacts on water quality, huge impacts on river systems and the basins where they’re placed,” said Jim McCarthy, an activist working for WaterWatch, a group in Oregon that advocates for river and water health.

WaterWatch, and other groups, have been advocating for dam removals around the U.S. for decades.

“I think what people don’t realize is there are a lot of dams in the country, over 90,000,” said Brian Graber, who works for the group, American Rivers.

According to the group's most recent dam report, 85% of the country’s dams are over 50 years old, which is the average life expectancy for most dams.

“We have to be deliberate about what we do with our rivers because they are facing more and more stress and if we want to keep these resources alive, taking out dams is part of the portfolio of things we need to be doing,” said McCarthy.

The Klamath’s health has been declining for years. The river was once the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast. The dams have impacted the salmon’s habitat and food supply, causing the runs to drop drastically. Those fish were the food supply for the Yurok Tribe.

“The word for salmon in Yurok is Ney-puy. The direct translation of Ney-puy means ‘what we eat’,” said Frankie Myers, the vice-chair of the Yurok Tribe.

The dams have dominated the river his whole life.

“The lower four dams on the Klamath River—for Yurok people— are a monument to colonialism,” said Myers.

The Yurok and advocates like Brian and Jim have been fighting through government red tape for the last 20 years. They might have finally achieved their goal.

Right now, the four dams are slated to be removed starting next year.

“The removal of the four lower dams on the Klamath River would have a dramatic impact on our way of life not only for our subsistence fishery but for the emotional and mental well-being of our people as well,” said Myers.

If the four are removed it will join a growing list. Nearly 60 dams were removed last year in 22 states and almost 2,000 dams have been removed over the last 100 years.

Myers hopes the Klamath will be renewed for his tribe.

“This has been my fight, my whole life. My children, my prayer, is that it won’t be theirs. Not that they won’t need to fight. Not that they won’t have a struggle, but that this struggle won’t be theirs,” he said.

LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — There’s a lot of solutions out there that people like to talk about when it comes to climate change, but one that’s gaining a lot of traction is kelp.

The seaweed is more than just a slimy sushi wrap. It could be key to fighting climate change. Just ask Michael Doall, the Associate Director for Restoration & Aquaculture at Stony Brook University.

“Not only is the kelp soaking up nitrogen, it’s soaking up carbon. It’s doing photosynthesis just like plants on land, soaking up this carbon. So, it’s sequestering this carbon, taking it out of the water and then again, when we harvest the kelp, we’re removing that. We’re approaching one of our farm sites and it’s part of this study over the last three years. We’re helping farmers learn how to grow kelp and integrate kelp in their oyster farms,” said Doall.

Doall and his crew took us to see one of their kelp farms off the coast of Long Island. We joined them with some waders to get a closer look.

“Reach in, grab that line and just lift it up. We seeded this at the end of December,” Doall explained.

And we got to taste it too.

Back on shore, Doall's partner, Chris Gobler, the Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation at Stony Brook, explained why kelp is such an important asset in the fight against climate change.

“Most of the research I’ve done is on environmental pollution, things like climate change, ocean acidification, harmful algeal blooms, overloading of nutrients. And as it turns out, seaweeds, and in particular kelp, is sort of the remedy for all of these environmental insults,” Gobler explains.

Like Doall said earlier, one of the main things the seaweed does is absorb nitrogen and carbon in the water. CO2 in the ocean can make the water more acidic, which can cause damage in a number of ways, but it’s incredibly detrimental to shellfish.

That's why oysters may go better with kelp than cocktail sauce.

“Ocean acidification is the biggest threat to animals that make shells. You can create what we’d call a halo effect. So, you’d have a particular area where maybe the whole estuary is getting acidified, but in that area where you’re farming the oysters, where you have the kelp, you’re actually creating sort of a refuge,” said Gobler.

We wanted to get an even closer look at the kelp, so we dove in.

It’s an amazing plant that can grow incredibly fast. Doall expects the long string blades to be up to 12 feet long in a few months. They thrive in the icy waters.

Kelp isn’t the only solution to fight climate change, but Doall and Gobler hope it can be another tool for humans to use in this fight to save the planet.