This sea urchin is green but often has reddish brown tones. It has short, sharp, crowded spines that are each about 1 inch long. The tube feet are darker than the spines.
Habitat
Brackish waters, and lower intertidal to subtidal depths of 984 feet, but most common in the shallow subtidal in kelp beds and rocky areas to depths of 164 feet.
Diet
Omnivorous grazer: primarily eats kelp and other algae, but will eat sponges, bryozoans, snails, or bivalves, especially blue mussels.
Life History
Green sea urchins reproduce by broadcast spawning in spring, in response to a protein released during phytoplankton blooms. Males first release sperm, which start swimming as soon as they hit the water, and then the females release their eggs. The larvae start life as plankton. Warmer water temperatures speed up development. When they settle, they undergo metamorphosis into a tiny urchin as small as 0.1 inches across. They can grow up to 3.6 inches wide and may live for 45 years.
IUCN Status
Not Evaluated
Ecosystem & Cultural Importance
These urchins are commercially harvested for their roe, called uni, a delicacy in many cultures.
Green sea urchins are eaten by a variety of fish and invertebrates and even by polar bears and walruses. In the NE Pacific, they have many predators, including a variety of fish: stout eelblennies, flounders, and wolf eels; a variety of invertebrates: giant pacific octopuses, oregon hairy triton snails, king and snow crabs, and various sea stars (including sunflower and leather stars), and many different kinds of birds: glaucous-winged and American herring gulls, various eiders, harlequin ducks, and albatrosses, and finally, sea otters.
Their mouth has 5 strong and sharp teeth that they use to scrape diatoms and coralline algae off of rocks.
Citations & Other Resources
Dvoretsky, Alexander G., and Vladimir G. Dvoretsky. inchesAquaculture of green sea urchin in the Barents Sea: A brief review of Russian studies.inches Reviews in Aquaculture 12.4 (2020): 2080-2090.
We use cookies to improve your experience and see how our guests are navigating the website. If this is alright by you, hit 'Accept All', or 'Settings' to customize and learn more.
Read our cookie policy
