SAMBRO COVE, NOVA SCOTIA—In the mid-1980s, an alien disease swept across the Nova Scotia coastline. Maritime beaches were littered with spineless shells, the skeletal remains of 230,000 tonnes of lifeless sea urchin left washed upon the shore.
The pathogen then vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.
Green sea urchin populations in shallow waters were wiped out and replaced by dense forests of seaweed, leaving the urchins unable to recolonize their former habitats.
Two decades later, a battered fishing industry finds the same event happening again. “My days are getting numbered,” says urchin harvester David Gray. “They could all be dead by next year.”
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Toronto Star
