San Francisco Estuary Partnership: Urchinomics
Desperate times, as the adage goes, call for desperate measures.
Other times, they just prompt creative solutions — like Norway company Urchinomics’ proposed remedy for the purple urchin seafloor takeover that has wiped out the North Coast’s bull kelp, turning once lush forests into bleak urchin barrens.
The animals rapidly proliferated about five years ago after a disease nearly wiped out their chief predator, the sunflower sea star. As the algae eaters multiplied, kelp forests, already stressed by unusually warm water, collapsed.