Most climate change research has concentrated on the direct effects of environmental change for individual species and their interactions. By affecting key foundation species and ecosystem engineers, however, climate change may have a variety of indirect that may complicate our abilities to predict the response of communities and ecosystems. In California, climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of storms over the last half century.  Storms may directly alter the structure of kelp forest food webs via disturbance. They also cause a large decrease in the biomass the dominant foundation species in the system, the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera. As kelp provides both habitat structure and a basal food resource for so many species, climate change may therefore indirectly cause further change to kelp forest food webs. We examined the direct and indirect impact of wave disturbance on the structure of kelp forest food webs using the Santa Barbara Coastal LTER’s long-term record of subtidal community structure at nine sites and wave records from the Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP). We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the direct and indirect effects of wave disturbance on kelp forest food web structure, as measured by both topological metrics and the ratios of species richness in different trophic functional groups. SEM results revealed a direct positive effect of waves on food web richness. Wave disturbance also indirectly altered the structure of kelp forest food webs. By removing adult kelp, strong wave action allowed dense thickets of juvenile kelp to grow in the spring and early summer. These dense stands of juvenile kelp supported a higher species richness, and in turn had a higher density of trophic links. Continued shifts in wave climate will likely alter the complexity of the habitat created by giant kelp, and lead to future shifts in the structure of the kelp forest food webs.