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An area of the subtidal where the population growth of sea urchins has gone unchecked causes destructive grazing of kelp beds or kelp forests (specifically the giant brown bladder kelp, Macrocystis). The transition from kelp forest to barren is defined by phase shifts in which one stable community state is shifted to another. [2]
In Alaskan kelp forest ecosystems, sea otters are the keystone species that mediates this trophic cascade. In Southern California, kelp forests persist without sea otters and the control of herbivorous urchins is instead mediated by a suite of predators including lobsters and large fishes, such as the California sheephead.
The purple sea urchin, along with sea otters and abalones, is a prominent member of the kelp forest community. [18] The purple sea urchin also plays a key role in the disappearance of kelp forests that is currently occurring due to climate change; [19] when urchins completely eliminate kelp from an area, an urchin barren results.
A welding hammer strapped to her wrist, Joy Hollenback slipped on blue fins and swam into the churning, chilly Pacific surf one fall morning to do her part to save Northern California's vanishing ...
Once Kina populations become out of control, kelp forest can be entirely eaten away, leaving bare rocks, also known as Kina Barrens. [7] A notable example of a Kina Barren is the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, which after also experiencing overfishing, has been almost entirely stripped of other marine life.
The recent explosion in the population of long-spined sea urchins (Centrostephanus rodgersii) in the waters south of Australia has been devastating to its kelp forests. The urchins, which are normally found north of the Great Southern Reef, have seen their range expand southward with the warm waters that themselves have caused a mass die-off of ...
The urchins, in turn, grazed the holdfasts of kelp so heavily that the kelp forests largely disappeared, along with all the species that depended on them. Reintroducing the sea otters has enabled the kelp ecosystem to be restored. For example, in Southeast Alaska some 400 sea otters were released, and they have bred to form a population ...
A deadly epidemic that is spreading through the Red Sea has killed off an entire species of sea urchin in the Gulf of Aqaba, imperilling the region's uniquely resilient coral reefs, an Israeli ...