Kelp installation at the Noyo Center for Marine Science, painted oak and patinaed copper, by Yorgen Kvinsland of Artstruct. July 28, 2021 — The collapse of the kelp forest off the north coast is part of a long-running sequence of destabilizing disasters. The kelp is being devoured by purple urchin, a native species whose predators have disappeared from the food chain. The otters, which ate the larger urchin, were hunted to near regional extinction for their fur, and the pycnopodia sunflower sea star, which formerly feasted on smaller urchin, have withered away from a wasting disease. Now the urchin, unchecked, have eaten themselves into overpopulation and near starvation, a condition they can survive in for years. The result is expanses of urchin barrens, with nothing but purple urchin where entire underwater ecosystems once thrived in kelp forests.