Science Norway: Norway's first onshore sea urchin farm up and running
An explosion of sea urchins is threatening to turn the Norwegian coastal seabed into a desert. The sea urchins live on Rhodophyta and saltwater plants like brown algae, also called kelp.
Seabeds can die when sea urchin numbers are too high. The kelp forest off the coast of northern Norway has almost been wiped out in recent decades.
"This is very worrisome, and the best solution to the problem is to remove the sea urchins," says researcher Philip James, an expert on sea urchins at the Nofima research institute in Tromsø.