A thorny issue: how sea urchins could offer a perverse climate hope
The aggressive march of long-spined sea urchins southwards from NSW and the explosion of short-spined urchin numbers in Victoria's Port Phillip Bay is intensifying as waters grow warmer.
The native species have become a case study in how climate change causes some species to become overabundant, shifting their range and devastating habitats where they voraciously feed.
But new research shows governments could reap financial and ecological benefits far outweighing the cost of culling overabundant sea urchins amid calls for the development of a fledgling food industry to halt destruction of dwindling kelp forests.
It's estimated there are billions of long-spined sea urchins in NSW alone, and perhaps hundreds of millions more spreading along the 8000 square kilometre area between southern NSW to Tasmania, and further along to Western Australia.
Long-spined sea urchins are native to NSW, but warming oceans and changing ocean currents caused by climate change have led to their numbers exploding locally and in Victoria and Tasmania.
Similarly, short-spined purple sea urchins are native to Victoria but have reached overabundant proportions, particularly in the shelter of Port Phillip Bay.
Sea urchins feed on kelp forests that provide food and shelter for marine species and remove pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous from water. When their numbers become overabundant, their voracious feeding patterns wipe out kelp forests entirely, creating what scientists describe as 'urchin barrens'.
A new study funded by the Victorian government conducted a cost-benefit analysis of culling over-grazing sea urchins in Port Phillip Bay, where it's estimated 240 million short-spined urchins proliferate. Kelp cover has declined by 59-98 per cent over the past 40 years, and native urchins have become up to four times more abundant.
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