CASPAR BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A welding hammer strapped to her wrist, Joy Hollenback slipped on blue fins and swam into the churning, chilly Pacific surf one fall morning to do her part to save Northern California’s vanishing kelp forests.
Hollenback floated on the swaying surface to regulate her breathing before free diving into the murky depths toward the seafloor. There, she spotted her target: voracious, kelp-devouring purple urchins.
Within seconds she smashed 20 to smithereens. “If you’re angry, it’s a cathartic way to get it all out,” Hollenback joked. “It’s ecologically sanctioned mayhem.”
Scientific diver Morgan Murphy-Cannella swims past bull kelp as she surveys a reforestation project, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, near Caspar, Calif. Kelp forests play an integral role in the health of the world’s oceans, one of the issues being discussed at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
The veterinarian who lives in Berkeley, California is part of a crew of volunteers who swim, snorkel and dive armed with pick axes and hammers on a sole mission: To crush purple urchins that largely destroyed 96% of California’s iconic bull kelp forests between 2014 and 2020, and with it harmed red abalone and other sea life they supported.
The pilot project off the Mendocino County coast is one of many initiatives California is testing to save such leafy marine ecosystems, which are declining worldwide due to climate change.
