According to a recent count by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, there’s been a 10,000% increase in purple sea urchins since 2014. There are many ongoing factors at play here, including warming waters from climate change. But 2013 marked a major, catastrophic shift in two parts. That’s when sea star wasting disease swept up the coast, killing sunflower sea stars to near extinction. Around the same time, a marine heat wave arrived and warmed the water for years, stunting kelp growth and reproduction. Sunflower sea stars—the giants of sea stars, with up to 21 limbs—eat sea urchins. In their absence, the sea urchin population proliferated. Sea urchins eat kelp, and the explosion in their population greatly diminished kelp forests, which provide critical habitat and nutrition for countless marine species. Kelp forests also soak up carbon — just like landbased forests. Without kelp off the coast of Oregon, we lose a critical carbon sink. Apart from their overwhelming numbers, there’s another problem with purples: They’re survivors. Normally, when a species loses its primary food source, its numbers begin to decline, even if that species has also lost a key predator. But purple sea urchins are different. Even after they’ve completely wiped out a kelp forest and there’s nothing left to eat, these strange little ocean creatures don’t die. Instead, they go into a zombie-like state in which they can survive without food for years. As soon as new kelp buds, the zombie urchins smell the food, wake up, and start munching. Kelp doesn’t stand a chance, and there’s really no tipping point at which the urchins die off on their own. Aaron Huang had been circling the Pacific Coast kelp issue for years. After more than a decade in the Seattle and San Francisco tech scenes, Huang was looking for a new professional project. He started studying permaculture, which he felt aligned with his 15 years of studying Buddhism. On multiple weeklong silent retreats, he filled a thick journal with what he calls “Socratic inquiry” into what he might focus on; it had to be something that would have a positive impact on the planet, something he could feel good about. Eventually, this thought experiment led Huang to a regenerative ocean-farming community called GreenWave, where he met Brad Bailey, a longtime sea urchin diver and commercial fisherman. Huang and Bailey got to talking about sea urchin harvesting and the urgent need to reduce purple sea urchin numbers in Oregon. If only these prolific creatures had value that would motivate a large number of divers to get them out of the water and onto our plates. In California fish and game wardens are encouraging recreational scuba divers to bring hammers with them and smash sea urchins. But in order to incentivize enough culling of the urchins to have any kind of impact, Huang says they need to be edible — and there needs to be a market. Sea urchins in general are valuable. Red sea urchins — which are more popular for harvesting than purples because they contain more roe (uni) — have skyrocketed in price because the purples are pushing them out. But the purples are the problem, and the purples are nearly empty and without value. Urchin ranching is one potential solution. It’s a relatively new approach to harvesting by which urchins are pulled from barrens, kept alive and fed until they’ve grown to a marketable size. Huang and Bailey saw an opportunity to help the kelp forests while opening up a new market for uni in a state that’s hungry for more local seafood; about 90% of seafood sold and consumed on Oregon’s coast is not from here. Bailey said it would be easy. Huang, admittedly naive and optimistic, saw kismet at work. After all, uni is one of his favorite foods. If harvesting uni could help save kelp forests and bring back coastal industries that have suffered alongside kelp loss, it was a win-win-win situation. In 2023 Huang and Bailey launched OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch. In July 2024, I visited their operation in Newport, where long white troughs or “racetracks” kept in a hagfish warehouse are now home to purple sea urchins that Bailey and his team of divers pull from the water. They’ve been experimenting with feeding them different types of seaweed; on average it’s taking them about 8 weeks to get them big enough for market. In their first summer of operation, in 2023, Huang wanted to answer a simple question: Do people want this product? Uni is very popular in Japan; in the states, it’s a more polarizing menu item. “People either love it or hate it,” says Huang, “but people who love it are fanatics.” The gonads of sea urchins are revealed when you crack them open, five lobes of Brad Bailey, CTO of OoNee Ranch, illumunates the trough where the urchins are raised to maturity at the company’s facility near Newport. JASON E. KAPLAN 27
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