Northern California’s kelp forests have been in steep decline, with an estimated 95% loss of canopy since 2014.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Transgenic sea urchins are fluoresced to make it easier for researchers to track cell movement. (Sandy Huffaker / For The Times) ...

In Northern California, purple sea urchins are decimating kelp forests. Though the species of urchin causing problems may vary by region, the damage is the same. NNehring/iStock This article is from ...

"They factor the fines into their costs and keep going." ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Sea urchins are dying in large numbers across the Caribbean, according to scientists who are racing to pinpoint the cause of the ...

They're purple, spiky and voracious, and just off the West Coast, there are more of them than you can count. Purple sea urchins have exploded in recent years off California, covering the ocean floor ...

While crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef have long been ecological villains in the popular imagination, sea urchins have mostly crawled under the national radar—until now. Long-spined ...

Jon Holcomb had been diving for urchins for more than three decades, but he’d never seen a downturn like the one that started in 2013. The valuable red urchins that lived off the coast of northern ...

On one of his last dive trips for sea urchins, Jeff Maassen dropped anchor off the backside of San Miguel, the most westerly and windswept of California’s Channel Islands. He squeezed his lanky 6-foot ...

Sea urchins have five teeth, each held by a separate jaw in a circular arrangement at the center of their spiked, spherical bodies. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Matter on September 18 ...