Kelp, Urchins, and the Rules We Wrote for a Different Ocean

Are Marine Protected Areas Sanctuaries from Humans—or Tools to Repair What We Broke?

There’s a petition headed to the California Fish and Wildlife Commission this April that, on its surface, sounds straightforward: Let trained divers into California's Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to remove urchins and restore kelp.

Simple, right? Not even a little.

Diver culling overpopulated sea urchins on rocky reef.

A Forest Missing in Plain Sight

If you’ve been in the water along California’s coast in the last decade, you’ve seen it. Or more accurately—you’ve seen what’s missing. And you don’t even need to get your hair wet to notice. From the shore, where summer rafts of kelp once floated across the surface, those same forest canopies are now patchy—or gone entirely.

Where towering kelp forests once swayed, there are now stretches of rocky reef carpeted in purple urchins. Spines where holdfasts, stipes, and blades should be. Motion replaced by stillness.

This wasn’t caused by a single thing. It rarely is. A marine heatwave. A disease that wiped out sunflower sea stars (a critically important purple urchin predator). A trophic cascade that didn’t just tip—but flipped. And now we’re left with a question that conservation has historically tried to avoid: What do you do when “protecting” an ecosystem isn’t enough to keep it alive?

The Petition That Poked the Bear

The Giant Giant Kelp Restoration Project (G2KR), a Monterey-based, grassroots conservation group, has put forward a proposal to the California Fish and Game Commission to allow trained divers to actively restore kelp inside five MPAs. Not observe. Not monitor. Not study. Act.

Remove urchins. Rebuild habitat. Try to kickstart recovery where the system has stalled. And in doing so, they’ve walked straight into one of conservation’s most tightly held norms: MPAs are supposed to be left alone.

What "Restoration" Actually Means Here

It’s worth pausing for a second on what this work actually looks like—because it’s both simpler and more hands-on than people expect.

Divers go down and cull urchins. And in this case, that means smashing them on the rocky reef with a hammer. That’s it. No futuristic tech. No massive infrastructure. Just people in the water, knocking back the grazing pressure that’s been holding kelp down.

And when that pressure lifts, something important happens. Kelp often comes back on its own. Spores already in the water settle. Microscopic stages already on the reef start growing. Nearby patches begin to reseed what was lost. Not everywhere. Not permanently. But enough to show that these systems aren’t gone. They’re stuck.

Which is what makes this proposal feel so immediate—and, to some, so disruptive. Because it suggests recovery isn’t always waiting on decades of protection. Sometimes, it’s waiting on intervention.

There’s a small, almost poetic parallel here.

Male garibaldi—California’s bright orange state marine fish—prepare nesting sites by clearing space on the rocky reef and tending patches of red algae where females will lay their eggs. In doing so, they remove what would otherwise overgraze or crowd out that growth.

Not so different from what divers are doing now. Not building something new—but making room for it to return. The difference, of course, is scale—and intent. But the underlying idea isn’t foreign to the system. What’s new is our role in it.

Two Visions, One Ocean

What’s unfolding here isn’t just a policy debate. It’s a philosophical one.

• On one side: MPAs as sanctuaries

Places where human pressure is removed, and ecosystems are allowed to recover on their own terms.

• On the other: MPAs as recovery tools

Places where we intervene—carefully, intentionally—to help ecosystems rebuild after human-driven collapse.

Both are rooted in care. Both are backed by science. Both are reacting to a changing ocean. And both are a little bit right—and a little bit incomplete.

A Quick Reality Check

Let’s be clear about something up front: this isn’t a call for bothsides-ism. We have a vested interest in seeing kelp forests recover. Full stop. And that means we pay attention when people closest to the problem decide to act—especially when the system around them is slow, unclear, or stuck.

Groups like G2KR aren’t operating outside of conservation. They’re operating at its edge. Testing whether the rules we built still match the conditions we’re in. Because the ocean those rules were written for is not the ocean we’re managing now.

This isn’t about dismissing process. It’s about recognizing that process was designed for a world where ecosystems were expected to recover if we stepped back. In some places, that assumption is breaking. So when people move—organize, propose, push—it’s not just about this petition. It’s a signal.

The people closest to the problem are no longer convinced that waiting is neutral.

The Case for Doing Something

There’s also a much more practical argument underneath all of this. We’ve seen what happens when you remove urchins. Even in small patches, kelp can come back. Not everywhere. Not permanently. But enough to show that recovery is still possible without rebuilding the system from scratch.

That matters, because it changes the question. This isn’t about inventing new technology or engineering a solution from the ground up. It’s about removing a bottleneck that’s actively suppressing recovery. Reduce the grazing pressure, and the system often begins to respond on its own—through spores already in the water, microscopic stages already on the reef, and nearby patches reseeding what was lost.

In that light, the proposal isn’t just urgent—it’s relatively low-tech and grounded in observed results. Which is why it resonates. Not because it’s perfect. But because it suggests that in at least some places, recovery isn’t decades away. It’s waiting on a shift in conditions.

The Case for Holding the Line (and Why It's Not Just Red Tape)

It’s easy to frame opposition to this petition as bureaucracy digging in its heels. But that’s not quite right. Because beneath the resistance is a set of concerns that go to the core of what MPAs are—and what they’re for.

Start with the most fundamental one: If MPAs are no longer places we leave alone, what are they? These areas were designed to be rare. Not just protected—but minimally disturbed. Places where ecosystems unfold without constant human adjustment. Places that serve as baselines, refuges, and, frankly, a check on our instinct to manage everything. Allowing active intervention—even for restoration—begins to shift that identity. And once that line moves, it’s hard to move it back.

Then there’s the science question. Not whether urchin removal can help kelp locally—it can—but whether this petition is oversimplifying a much bigger system.

Kelp dynamics aren’t driven by a single lever. They respond to temperature, nutrients, storm disturbance, predator presence, and broader oceanographic cycles. Critics worry that focusing on urchins risks telling a cleaner story than the ecosystem actually supports. In that framing, intervention doesn’t just risk failure—it risks misdiagnosis.

There’s also a quieter, but deeply practical concern: What counts as “restoration”—and who decides? Because once you allow urchin removal, gear use, and organized access inside MPAs, you’re not just approving an action. You’re creating a category. And categories have a way of expanding. What starts as targeted restoration could, over time, blur into something harder to distinguish from extraction—especially if commercial incentives, access pressures, or shifting priorities enter the picture. This isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition.

And then there’s the governance reality. Even if everyone involved is acting in good faith: Who certifies a “trained diver”? Who monitors impacts in real time? How do you ensure restoration doesn’t become opportunistic take? These are not abstract questions. They land on agencies that are already stretched thin, managing coastlines that are anything but simple.

Finally, there’s a deeper critique that sits underneath all of this: Are we solving the right problem? Because urchin barrens didn’t emerge in isolation. They’re the result of:

• Marine heatwaves

• Predator loss

• System-wide ecological shifts

Removing urchins may help kelp return in places. But it doesn’t address the conditions that allowed the collapse in the first place. So the concern becomes: Are we restoring a system—or maintaining it in a state that now requires constant intervention?

None of these objections are trivial. None of them are anti-restoration. They are, at their core, questions about limits—of science, of governance, and of our own confidence in managing complex systems. And they deserve to be taken seriously.

What We Appreciate About This Moment

Here’s where we land. Not on one side or the other—but firmly in appreciation of what’s happening. Because a group saw a problem… and instead of waiting for perfect alignment… they moved.

They organized. They proposed. They challenged a system that wasn’t built for the moment we’re in. That doesn’t make them automatically right. But it does make them necessary.

We need people willing to test the edges of policy. To ask whether the rules we wrote for a different ocean still serve this one. Because let’s be honest: The MPAs we designed assumed ecosystems would recover if we stepped back.

What we’re seeing now is that in some cases—stepping back isn’t neutral. It’s a choice.

The Bigger Shift Underway

This debate isn’t going away after April. It’s showing up everywhere:

• Coral reefs and assisted evolution

• Oyster restoration in urban estuaries

• Rewilding efforts that include active species reintroduction

Across systems, we’re being pulled toward a new question: Is conservation about restraint—or responsibility? And increasingly, the answer might be: Both. At the same time. In tension.

The Invitation

If there’s a role for all of us in this moment, it’s not to rush to a side. It’s to stay engaged in the question. Because this is what adaptive management actually looks like: Not clean. Not settled. But debated in the open, with real stakes and real tradeoffs.

So as this petition moves forward, pay attention. Not just to the outcome—But to how we decide.

A Small Next Step

• Talk to someone who sees this issue differently than you do

• Follow the Commission discussion in April

• Learn what kelp restoration looks like in your own backyard

• Come to Ocean Hoptimism on Thursday, April 23, to meet Keith Rootsaert, founder of the Giant Giant Kelp Restoration Project to hear his take on the decision by the State of California.

  
  

Because whether through protection, intervention, or something in between—the work is the same: helping the ocean find its way back.