![]() ![]() Urchin divers have worked with ODFW shellfish biologists to monitor and survey urchin populations for years prior to these more recent events. In recent years, career urchin divers brought attention to the purple sea urchin population boom and bull kelp forest declines. Port Orford has been Oregon’s sea urchin capital since the initiation of the fishery here in the early 1990’s. ![]() Most recently, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, in collaboration with commercial urchin divers, completed a survey of sea urchin populations at Orford Reef, reporting a preliminary estimate of ~350 million purple sea urchins, a more than 10,000-fold increase on this single reef since 2014. More recently, studies have revealed the rapid climate-driven catastrophic shift in 2014 from previously robust kelp forests to unproductive large scale urchin barrens in northern California, an ecoregion bearing many similarities to that found on the southern coast of Oregon. In certain areas, disappearance of important kelp forest populations is drawing attention from the scientific community, natural resource managers, commercial divers and fishermen, tribal members, sport divers, ecotourists and the businesses who serve them, and coastal communities. In addition, local stressors and regional variation in the effects of these drivers dominate kelp dynamics. ![]() Around the globe, evidence has emerged in recent years concerning the global drivers affecting kelp forests at multiple scales. ![]()
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