Sea otters remain a threatened species in California. Despite recent efforts by sea urchin harvesters to reduce protections for southern sea otters under the Endangered Species Act, the species is ...

If you could walk the ocean floor off the coast of Cape Arago in Oregon in the summer, you’d find yourself in the mysterious green depths of a forest of kelp. Look up, and youd ...

“To see what some of those places now look like with urchin barrens is really devastating.” Another species that frequently preys on purple sea urchins: sea otters. Hatch said that restoring a ...

The California Sea Urchin Commission and Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara sought to strip protections on the grounds that otter numbers and their range have increased since they were listed ...

Sponsor Message Sea otters are large marine mammals that spend ... He says there are areas with an over-abundance of urchins — the so called "urchin barrens" where urchins have eaten all the ...

Sea otters play a vital role in maintaining the ... protects the kelp forest from being overgrazed. The kelp keeps the urchin happy and fed. The urchin keep the otter healthy and fed, and the ...

and this increase in the number of sea otters is gonna have an impact on that," said Dave Rudie, chair of the California Sea Urchin Commission. This federal report doesn't say the sea otters ...

Kelp forests rely on the top-down pressure sea otters exert via predation on sea urchins. By controlling the sea urchin population, they help manage the grazing pressure on kelp, since sea urchins ...

Despite recent efforts by sea urchin harvesters to reduce protections for southern sea otters under the Endangered Species Act, the species is still at risk, federal officials say. The fuzzy ...