Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Transgenic sea urchins are fluoresced to make it easier for researchers to track cell movement. (Sandy Huffaker / For The Times) ...

South of Tampa Bay, in Florida, wedged between a quiet neighborhood and a mangrove forest, custom-designed aquariums are home to thousands of sea-urchin larvae that tumble and drift through the water.

In Northern California, purple sea urchins are decimating kelp forests. Though the species of urchin causing problems may vary by region, the damage is the same. NNehring/iStock This article is from ...

NEWPORT — Tens of millions of voracious purple sea urchins that have already chomped their way through towering underwater kelp forests in California are spreading north to Oregon, sending the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Sea urchins are dying in large numbers across the Caribbean, according to scientists who are racing to pinpoint the cause of the ...

They're purple, spiky and voracious, and just off the West Coast, there are more of them than you can count. Purple sea urchins have exploded in recent years off California, covering the ocean floor ...

While crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef have long been ecological villains in the popular imagination, sea urchins have mostly crawled under the national radar—until now. Long-spined ...

Coral reef ecosystems are severely threatened by pollution, disease, overharvesting and other factors. For thousands of years, long-spined sea urchins helped keep reefs intact. They eat seaweed, which ...

Jon Holcomb had been diving for urchins for more than three decades, but he’d never seen a downturn like the one that started in 2013. The valuable red urchins that lived off the coast of northern ...