When it comes to climate action, people generally recommend eating less meat but that’s not the case for every location! In order to help the bull kelp of northern California survive, there’s a new, radical plan: Eat the purple sea urchins that are decimating it.
Warming waters and less predators have led to a boom in the population of wild purple sea urchins. Those are the really spiky guys on the sea floor. They eat a variety of things but have been munching down on the kelp forests in the are and absolutely destroying them.
Researchers have begun looking into capturing them and farming them. They fatten them up with a simple diet and in a few weeks they’re ready for market. This helps their population as well as with the current state of things, they are starving as there is not enough food to go around. If the plan works, then similar solutions can be used for other areas of the world facing the same problem.