Maybe we aren't as smart as we think we are.

When Mya Breitbart heard that something was killing off sea urchins en masse, she thought: Oh no, not again. The long-spined sea urchin—a fist-size ball of black defensive spines—is a crucial and ...

Svenja Kling is a fifth-year PhD student studying marine biology at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Kling ...

Sea urchins are dying across the Caribbean at a pace scientists say could rival a mass die-off that last occurred in 1983, alarming many who warn the trend could further decimate already frail coral ...

I came across the stunning sea urchin photography of Anders Hallan. The way all the urchins are lined up in a grid makes them ...

Exactly how much human-generated carbon emissions the world’s oceans can soak up—and how this is done—is a question scientists are still pondering, but it’s accepted that the deepest seas can be an ...

When a team of scuba-diving marine biologists explored reefs off the central coast of California, they found themselves repeatedly swimming through lush kelp forests interspersed with patches of ...

Sea urchins receive a lot of attention in California. Red urchins support a thriving fishery, while their purple cousins are often blamed for mowing down kelp forests to create urchin barrens. Yet for ...

A sea urchin is a study in contradictions: tenacious and spiky on the outside, vulnerable and velvety on the inside. With a beauty both fragile and fierce, it can burrow for decades into rock, but die ...

Since 2014, the Sonoma and Mendocino coast has lost 90% of its bull kelp forest due to climate change. Interestingly, the solution to the crisis may involve eating purple sea urchin. The Mendocino ...