Did you know that there are cockroaches in the sea? The purple sea urchin, a sea creature with the same tenacious vitality and super reproductive ability as a land cockroach, is as terrifying as a land cockroach.
In recent years, under the catalysis of global warming and other factors, the number of this terrible "cockroach" along the coast of Northern California has soared 60 times, out of the predatory instinct of organisms, they have eaten 90% of the "kelp forest" on which abalone and other marine organisms depend for their livelihood, and in order to protect weak abalone and other marine organisms, they have to raise money to find divers to go to the sea to "hunt" purple sea urchins, hoping to keep the kelp forest alive. Hoffman, a professor of marine ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, described: "In just 5 years, the beautiful kelp forest has been gnawed into the desert. ”
Global warming has not only caused the sea to warm up, but also changed the marine ecology, the broad-leaved giant algae forest off the coast of the northeastern Maine in the United States has plummeted, and the kelp forest off the coast of Tasmania in Australia has also been eaten by the surge of marine cockroaches, and Northern California is trying to avoid following in Tasmanian's footsteps.
The first to find the anomaly was the fisherman who collected the red sea urchin that was regarded as a delicacy by the Japanese sushi restaurant in the local area, and he found that a large number of purple sea urchins ate the kelp, so that the poor red sea urchin had nothing to eat, the hungry lean and thin, the number of which decreased sharply, and the output value of red sea urchin in Northern California also fell from 110 million Taiwan dollars in 2013 to 18.58 million Taiwan dollars in 2016, so the fishermen had to find another livelihood.
Global warming also forms warm water masses in the Pacific Ocean, blocking the upwelling flow of nutrients on the seafloor, and kelp cannot obtain the nutrients needed for growth. The reduction of kelp has made the purple sea urchin eat everything, and there is no doubt that it is a foodie. Officials from the California Department of Fisheries and Wildlife described it as "purple sea urchins are like cockroaches in the sea, which can starve for a long time and still be alive." ”
Scholars also found that the original vegetarian red sea urchin could not find kelp to eat, had to switch to eating meat, changed to eating animals called barnacles, and barnacles faced these newborn predators that did not know where to emerge, naturally did not have any ability to resist, and became the most innocent victim. The disappearance of kelp forests has affected the number of red abalone that also feeds on kelp, and I am afraid that fishing will have to be suspended in the next two seasons, and the next may be the destruction of fish such as the cod that originally inhabited the kelp forest, so it has become a top priority to curb the crazy breeding of the next generation of purple sea urchins and control its existing "population size".