Monitoring of sea urchins in Port Phillip Bay over a four-year period has revealed that booming urchin populations and the barren grounds they created by overgrazing kelp beds are likely to persist in the long term unless drastic action is taken.
High-density populations of the Australian urchin Heliocidaris erythrogramma have been monitored in Port Phillip Bay since 2009 by University of Tasmania and divers, after first being documented in the 1980s.
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