Using only fins, divers wild-harvest abalone off eastern Australia’s coast. The marine snail, known for its beautiful iridescent shell but sought for its meat, is a fishery worth more than 150 million Australian dollars ($93 million) annually. But the divers’ craft is changing as the coast’s kelp forest — an abalone home — has succumbed to urchins. Droves of the spiky creatures munch down the forest, leaving so-called urchin barrens in their wake. Shocked, the abalone divers started a kelp forest restoration cooperative in 2011, one of the first ever. But despite some successes, including restoring 42 hectares (105 acres), the forest continues to dwindle. Their story is part of a global trend, with kelp forests declining along most of the high-latitude, cool-water coastlines they inhabit. Toward helping stem this decline, a recent journal commentary catalogued how many kelp forests are in conservation zones and the degree of those protections, finding that less than one-fifth are protected at all. It also detailed the causes of kelp decline, including predation by urchins, and cataloged global restoration projects. “[K]elp forests are often forgotten” in the global conservation conversation, Aaron Eger, program director at Kelp Forest Alliance, a research-focused network of more than 200 conservationists, kelp lovers and seaweed professionals headquartered in Sydney, Australia, and the lead author of the commentary, told Mongabay. “This is the first global assessment of where kelp forests are, where they’re threatened, how much of that has been restored, where it’s been lost and how much of that is…This article was originally published on Mongabay