Off the Northern California coast, there is a crisis beneath the waves. The kelp forest – seaweed that provided habitat and food for much of life in the ocean – is gone, wiped out by an exploding population of purple sea urchins.

Off the Northern California coast, there is a crisis beneath the waves. The kelp forest – seaweed that provided habitat and food for much of life in the ocean – is gone, wiped out by an exploding population of purple sea urchins.

Denise MacDonald held out a tray of spiny purple sea urchins. The roe, served in the shell and the color of egg yolk, contrasted nicely with the urchin's dark, purple spines. MacDonald, director of global brand marketing at a company called Urchinomics, invited me to have a taste. I scooped up a blueberry-sized amount with a spoon.

An invasion of sea urchins is threatening to turn large areas of the world’s seabed into desert-like barrens. But thanks to Norwegian research, businesses now have an economic incentive to rid the waters of these destructive pests.

Warm water and “sea star wasting disease” helped urchins take over the coast, a new study finds.

PALO ALTO, California, US -- A sea urchin ranching company has secured a sought-after permitted aquaculture facility in California, its first site in the US and hopes to begin operations by late next year.