Overfishing and climate change have allowed sea urchins to explode in population. Left unchecked, they decimate the world's kelp forests, creating urchin barrens – an alternative stable state of the kelp forest ecosystem. Urchinomics restores kelp forests and creates rural job opportunities by paying fishers market rates to remove these valueless, overgrazing urchins. It then ranches them in proprietary land-based aquaculture systems and converts them into premium uni to sell to top-tier distributors and restaurants.