Last fall, I posted photos from an urchin barren at Elliott Bay Marina. It’s taken me forever to compile video from the same dive, but here it is in all its glory – video of the urchin barren at Elliott Bay Marina from November 2014:
I’ll return to the site as this year’s kelp begins to establish to see whether we can expect the kelp forest to return. More on that soon!
In related news, here’s a an article from National Geographic about what researchers are seeing in California in the way of urchin populations. Though major increases in urchin densities have been observed locally following sea star wasting syndrome, it’s interesting to see that’s not a uniform trend.