Purple urchins like kelp

Kelp is part of the underwater forests that in many ways are as important to the oceans as trees are to the land. The forests absorb carbon emissions and provide critical habitat and food for a wide range of species. Kelp forests exist along the cooler coastlines of every continent but Antarctica. But they are being attacked. In California it's the purple urchin, a shellfish the size of a plum with quarter-inch spikes, that is the attacker. The heat of climate change gas resulted in a 60-fold explosion of purple urchins off Northern California’s coast and they are decimating the forest.