With its ability to grow to as big as three feet across, armed with up to 24 limbs covered with tiny suction tubes, the sunflower star is a purple urchin-eating machine. But Bank said the sunflower ...

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has doubled the size of its otter rehabilitation center, enhancing its capacity to rescue, ...

Massive sea urchin populations are destroying Hawaii's coral reefs faster than they can naturally rebuild themselves.

All animals and plants are important to their environment, but are some more important than others? Every ecosystem consists of complex interactions between plants, animals, and abiotic (nonliving) ...

While free diving to photograph kelp forests along the California coastline, I’ve viscerally felt the consequences of finiteness as a living being—the fleeting nature of a single breath, the limits of ...

While working on remote Alaskan islands, he found where sea otters were absent, sea urchin populations mushroomed, overtaking kelp forests. He concluded the small mammals were integral to ...

After missing from the Oregon coast for more than a century, sea otters are getting a step closer ... kelp forests and controlling invasive sea urchin populations. “They’re the guardians ...

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 ...

“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 ...

Sunflower sea stars are one of the natural predators of the sea urchin, along with the sea otter. “In ecology, we think about the important role of redundancy in an ecosystem,” said Leigh ...

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 kelp.