NORTH COAST RED SEA URCHIN

The issues: Northern California urchin are starving due to declining kelp forests and competition with purple sea urchin. They also face ocean acidification. Season: Year-round California’s red sea urchin fishery is based mostly in Southern California, but the Northern California industry still brought in $3 million in 2013, mostly to small North Coast towns. With the harvest at 10 percent of what it was then, Fort Bragg sea urchin processor Bob Juntz of Ocean Fresh Seafood is having his worst year since opening in 1984.

Urchins must be harvested by hand, and divers are finding urchin shells practically empty where they normally gather them, or diving to unsafe depths to find ones they can sell. In addition to a lack of kelp, there is also an overabundance of purple sea urchin, which Catton estimates is at 60 times its normal population. Without much of a commercial market or real predators, the purple urchin are stripping the kelp that’s left, which is having an impact on red abalone too.

Aerial monitoring of kelp growth on the North Coast has shown that it dropped by 93 percent between 2008 and 2014. Catton was hoping that kelp would grow back this year because of La Niña, but so far it’s been patchy.

“We’re in a waiting mode really. We’re just taking what we can and waiting for the kelp to grow back,” said Juntz. “It’s no fun.”