The Mendocino Voice | Mendocino County, CA (https://mendovoice.com/tag/bull-kelp/)
Divers taking a hammer to purple urchin is just one piece of the goal to bring back the bull kelp: “We’re still struggling to acquire multi-year funding for restoration work at large.”
The pycnopodia sighting brought “a bit of hope to a gloomy situation,” as diver Grant Downie said he’s been discouraged by low kelp numbers and not many viable red urchins.
“We have limited time and conservation dollars, so we want to be as data-driven as possible.”
Despite a long road ahead and a purple seafloor, nearly two years of hard work and grant money have shown that clearing purple urchin by hand could help bring back Northern California’s bull kelp forests.
The North Coast has lost more than 90% of it’s bull kelp from the ocean due to climate change and the massive influx of purple urchin. Last Tuesday, kelp restoration efforts got underway when nonprofit Reef Check sent down two divers to collect as many purple urchin as they could from the ocean floor.
