Kelp vs. Urchins

Underwater forests: beautiful, mysterious, teeming with fishy surprises, and found along the world’s more temperate coastlines. But an enemy is stalking northern California’s shores: small, deceptively pretty sea urchins with a big appetite for kelp. University of California-Santa Cruz ocean sciences graduate student Meredith McPherson details why the urchins wiped out kelp forests and what is being done to turn things around.