Sea Urchins: Endangered Kelp Forests

In California a real bloodbath is taking place right now. This is the destruction of laminaria, algae also known as: kelp. They inhabit the shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean and give life to lush forests, the habitat of various fish. Unfortunately, kelp forests have long been continuously devoured by Sea urchins locals. They leave a desert instead of forests. Not far away, however, the sea urchins coexist peacefully with the algae. Then why this difference in behavior between areas that are so close?

Here, the scientists analyzed two different species of sea urchin. The Strongylocentrotus purpuratuspurple in color, and lo Mesocentrotus franciscanus, of red tint. They are two species that live in California waters and have always lived with kelp except where they devour it. There has been a clear decline in recent years. Dan Reed, author of the study, had noticed this as early as the 1980s. A possible proposition could be that sea urchins feed on organic forest waste (dead leaves). If these are not available, the hedgehogs will devote themselves to living plants. So the expert and his team created a small kelp forest in the lab and introduced sea urchins into it.

If the kelp produces enough debris to satisfy the hedgehogs, they will not eat the live plants. If there are more hedgehogs than kelp, the forest is quickly decimated. Also here the global warming it affects a lot, because stress deteriorates kelp’s health: it grows less and produces less debris. This is where the process of forest destruction begins. One tip from scientists is to replant kelp not in the middle, but on the edges of existing forests. A method of giving curls what they need.