The Purple Urchins Don't Die

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer explains how scientists are getting creative to deal with the hordes of urchins overtaking kelp forests in the Pacific Ocean — and why this kind of drastic ecological change may become more common as the climate gets hotter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:04.0	Hey, everybody.
0:06.0	Maddie Sifai here with NPR Climate Correspondent Lauren
0:09.6	Summer, Hey Lauren.
0:10.6	Hey, okay.
0:11.4	Maddie, today I want you to picture diving in the Pacific Ocean.
0:15.6	Oh, okay.
0:16.6	I like where this is headed.
0:18.6	Okay.
0:19.6	You look down.
0:21.6	But instead of seeing rocks and seaweed and stuff, you see purple.
0:26.6	Purple.
0:27.6	Yeah, hundreds of round, spiky, purple things.
0:31.3	It looks like someone rolled out a purple carpet over the sea floor as far as you can see.
0:36.8	Their purple sea urchins.
0:39.2	Morgan Murphy, Canela, is a diver and she's seen an explosion of them off the Northern
0:44.0	California coast.
0:45.0	Okay, what's going on?
0:47.0	These urchins have taken over what used to be kelp forests.
0:50.1	You know, that's the seaweed that grows 30 to 60 feet tall, so it creates this really
0:54.9	lush underwater forest.
0:57.8	Urchins eat kelp, but normally not enough to really hurt the whole kelp population.
	...

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