cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5248565

If you could walk the ocean floor off the coast of Cape Arago in Oregon in the summer, you’d find yourself in the mysterious green depths of a forest of kelp. Look up, and you’d see sunlight filtering through the fronds waving in the current; look down, and you’d see the plants anchored to an ocean floor covered with life. But if you walked a little bit farther, you’d come to a barren clearing, no sign of kelp or much else — just a carpet of purple sea urchin, a creature that is devouring kelp at an alarming rate.

The disappearance of kelp forests is widely felt here; gray whales have changed their foraging patterns, and the red abalone fishery in Northern California closed after swarms of urchins and warming waters destroyed more than 90% of the kelp forests there. In Oregon, a 2024 study by the Oregon Kelp Alliance found that over a 12-year period, the kelp forest off the coast declined by up to 73%, primarily due to an out-of-control population of purple sea urchins, which graze on the kelp. This system is out of balance largely owing to the absence of a keystone species: xvlh-t’vsh, which means “sea otter” in the Athabaskan language of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. For more than 20 years, the Siletz Tribe has been working to reintroduce sea otters.

Full Article (archive link)