VIDEO SERIES SHOWCASES HOW CALIFORNIA'S URCHIN FISHERY AND AQUACULTURE INDUSTRY IS WORKING TO SAVE THE KELP FORESTS

For Grant Downie, a commercial urchin diver based in Fort Bragg, California, the local seascape poses a counterintuitive problem: Lately, there are too many urchins growing here.

It’s not just Fort Bragg. Much of California’s coast is marked by “urchin barrens,” sites where urchins have grown so abundant that they’ve destroyed kelp forests. Rather than starve, though, the urchins persist — alive still, but, since they’re lacking nutrients, empty of the uni that Downie and other divers harvest.

That’s bad for the divers, and bad for the chefs and diners who consider urchin gonads, known as uni, a delicacy. But it also causes a crisis for the ecosystem: Urchins can persist without food for decades, consuming any new kelp growth and preventing the forests from re-establishing. For a place like California where kelp forests are iconic, this is an issue for lots of different communities, human and otherwise that have come to rely on kelp forests and all that they provide.

With the help of a grant from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, researchers Moss Landing Marine Labs of San José State University, industry partners and California Sea Grant have been working with Downie and his fellow divers to get them back to work with an innovative approach to producing uni — all while addressing the root ecological problem.

How does it work? Watch the video below to find out.