Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumCalifornia's Underwater Forests Are Being Eaten by the 'Cockroaches of the Ocean'
Source: New York Times
Californias Underwater Forests Are Being Eaten by the Cockroaches of the Ocean
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
Oct. 22, 2018
ALBION, Calif. Early on a gray summer Saturday, an unusual assemblage commercial fishermen, recreational boaters, neoprene-clad divers gathered for a mission at Albion Cove, a three-hour drive north of San Francisco.
Our target today is the purple urchin, said Josh Russo, a recreational fishing advocate who organized the event. The evil purple urchin.
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The underwater forests huge, sprawling tangles of brown seaweed are in many ways just as important to the oceans as trees are to the land. Like trees, they absorb carbon emissions and they provide critical habitat and food for a wide range of species. But when climate change helped trigger a 60-fold explosion of purple urchins off Northern Californias coast, the urchins went on a feeding frenzy and the kelp was devoured.
It would be like one of those beautiful deciduous forests turned into a desert, said Gretchen Hoffman, a professor of marine ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But in the matter of five years.
The dangers extend far beyond this inlet: Kelp forests exist along the cooler coastlines of every continent but Antarctica. And they are under threat both from rising ocean temperatures and from what those warmer waters bring.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/climate/kelp-climate-change-california.html
eppur_se_muova
(36,263 posts)Sea otters kept the urchin population in check for years, until they were hunted to near-extinction.
BigmanPigman
(51,594 posts)Who hunts them in the US?
eppur_se_muova
(36,263 posts)Also, they like to eat abalones, which are money makers for those who harvest them, as well as salmon and Dungeness crabs. Lots of fisherman hate them for that reason, and are not above keeping a rifle on board to kill off the competition when out of sight of witnesses.
Seat otters are still classified as an endangered species.
(Historical trivia: Sea otters were first described scientifically by Georg Steller, of Steller's Jay, Steller's Sea Cow, and Steller's Sea Lion fame.
BigmanPigman
(51,594 posts)That is why I always wanted to be reincarnated as one...they like to swim, play, rest in the sun and eat great seafood...what a life. That is until I found out that they do have an enemy...MAN. That is when I no longer wanted to one in another life. People suck!