eat an urchin

Why EAt An Urchin?

Warming oceans have enabled urchins to wreak havoc across 2,000 km of Australia's coastline - an area as big as the Great Barrier Reef.

What is an urchin?

The longspined sea urchin (Centrostephanus Rodgersii) or just “Centro” is an echinoderm, meaning this animal belongs to a group of marine invertebrates including sea stars and sea cucumbers which all have “spiky skin”. As its name implies, the longspined sea urchin is armed with exceptionally long, black, moveable black spines. Well protected from predators, the spines contain an irritant toxin, which is dispersed when pricked.

Within a balanced ecosystem, the sea urchin must have predators otherwise they can be devastating to their own environments creating what is called an urchin barren, an area where the urchin population grows unchecked resulting in overgrazing of the kelp forest and a loss of biodiversity within the reef habitat. There is a hundredfold drop in primary production when ecosystems go from kelp bed to an urchin barren.