Put Sea Urchins on Lunch Menu to Restore Kelp Forests, Say Ecologists

Urchinomics, a Norwegian company, has plans to save underwater forests facing degradation due to large amounts of urchins taking over and eating all the sea kelp.

As well as the overwhelming amounts of sea urchins in Tasmania, Japan, Norway and Canada, it is estimated that there are 100 times more purple urchins near California than there was in 2014. But local divers, ecologists, and entrepreneurs are developing a fishery for the tens of millions of urchins overpopulating the oceans to clear seafloor space and help regrow kelp in the now-barren environments.

Urchinomics plans to feed the hungry urchins – whose gonads have been shriveled in their barren surroundings – in tanks then sell them off to restaurants once they are in a marketable condition.

Renee Angwin, Coastal and Marine Institute Laboratory manager at San Diego State University, helps by feeding the urchins dried seaweed pellets over a period of two months, after which their gonads grow into an edible, healthy size.

“We’re letting nature do all the work,” Angwin says. “Nature’s growing it to market size and then we’re just enhancing what nature’s already done.”