While they have no backbone, sunflower sea stars ( Pycnopodia helianthoides) mean business–especailly when faced with spiny ...

Sea urchins have no brains or hearts. But put them in the proximity of the unmistakable sunflower sea star, and somewhere in ...

Sea otters are often portrayed as lovable and relaxed animals that spend their time goofing around. Or, simply floating on their backs in the water with their special rock. While this image is ...

The Gulf of Maine is warming 99 percent faster than the rest of the ocean, with devastating repercussions for all marine life, from kelp to finfish to lobster. “It’s harder and harder to find ...

Sunflower sea stars — recently decimated from the ocean off western Mexico, California, Oregon and Washington — are like wolves of the kelp forest, eating sea urchins that will overgraze if ...

The sea stars eat purple sea urchins, a round, spiky invertebrate that eats kelp like a teenager eats french fries. “I don’t think the outbreak was triggered by global warming.

Kelp forests once grew thick here, but have been grazed down by growing populations of sea urchins, in this image from 2020. According to a status report released by the Oregon Kelp Alliance in ...

Newly discovered kelp fossils peg their existence to 32 million years ago. These fossils may help explain how the Pacific Ocean's underwater 'forests' came to be.

Forests of kelp, a fast-growing brown algae, provide food and habitat for hundreds of marine species and absorb greenhouse gases that might otherwise hasten climate change. Yet kelp is also highly ...

"They eat a lot of sea urchins," said Southern Sea Otter Recovery Coordinator Lillian Carswell. "And by eating a lot of sea urchins, they help to defend the kelp from overgrazing.