Warming waters and over-hunting the marine mammals that once brought balance to the ecosystem have led to an overpopulation of Pacific purple sea urchins. And while sprawling urchin barrens sound like ...

The founders of a Newport startup have a plan to turn the tides for these spiky pests. Purple sea urchins are carpeting the ocean floor off the coast of Oregon — their round, spiky bodies clinging to ...

Lacking natural predators and able to survive long after food sources are diminished, purple sea urchins are devastating kelp ...

One of the biggest drivers in bull kelp loss appears to be a boom in purple sea urchin populations. The urchins multiplied around the time a mysterious disease decimated sea star populations ...

Purple sea urchins have benefited from the decline of the sunflower sea star. This was a major predator until it was almost completely wiped out by a wasting disease in 2014. The resulting explosion ...

Broadly, there are far too many purple urchins for divers to bag on the seafloor. Urchin “barrens” are vast, stretching through Oregon, and their natural predators are absent from the north coast: ...