The appeal of this model is ecological: kelp forests are among the most biologically productive marine ecosystems on Earth.

They support enormous concentrations of fish, marine mammals, shellfish, and seabirds.

A people skilled in harvesting these resources would have had a reliable food supply along the entire coast, reducing the need for the kind of radical ecological adaptation required when crossing from a coastal to an interior environment.

The model predicts rapid southward movement once the coast was entered.

The model also predicts that much of the archaeological evidence for this migration is now invisible.