I was never supposed to be a villian. 

Yes, it’s me. The spiny purple one. The “kelp murderer".

There was a time when I was just a simple spine-ball tucked away in a crevice, blending in with barnacles, quietly nibbling off my rock with my Aristotle’s lantern.  

I was just another dot on the seafloor, minding my business!

But then—poof!
No more otters.
Sea stars all shriveled up.

When you pushed already-stressed ecosystems over the edge!
(ahem—I do admit, we were pretty happy about that.)

 And suddenly, we’re a crisis. 

We arrived only after others were wiped out.

You look at us and see a barren. A purple carpet lining the seafloor. But we see a space becoming something else.

We got weird and resourceful when things fell apart. Abudant and alive in the cracks of a system unraveling.

We’re fluid. Yes, darling. Flexible anatomies. Wild, ungovernable adaptive strategies.

I’m not just a villian.  I’m Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, the purple sea urchin. My species has survived for millions of years not through dominance, but through careful sensitivity—to current, temperature, chemistry, touch. 

We don’t have eyes, but we see with our whole bodies. Our skin is photoreceptive, our spines taste the water. 

We are ancient futurists, communing in of an entangled network.

We adapt to all depths of the ocean. While our spines move in unison, we use our shadows as navigation. 

You know us well. Our uni has been a delicacies for centuries.

And biologically? We’re queer as tidepools.

We have gonads, sure—but you can’t tell from the outside who’s producing eggs and who’s releasing sperm. In fact, our larvae sometimes reproduce as larvae, skipping adulthood entirely, like: "No thanks, I’m good here." That’s called paedomorphosis—we’re kinda like Peter Pan.

Some of us clone ourselves. Some of us change reproductive patterns based on temperature, population density, or environmental stress. We’re not stuck in rigid roles—we shift, respond, reinvent. Our queerness is an identity and an ecological strategy.

We decorate our bodies with shells, rocks, algae—armor against predators, against the sun.

We lose a part, we grow it back. 

I believe in surviving when the system forgets you. You call it a barren, but i see it as full.

You say you want to restore things. To bring the kelp back. Lovely idea, truly. I miss her, too. But what you forget is that kelp doesn’t just grow because you want her to. She’s moody. She needs chill water and stable conditions. And she absolutely hates heatwaves.

i know that some of things aren’t coming back.
Not the way they were. And maybe that’s okay.

We’re not so different from you, in fact we share many of the same genes. They found a special part of the urchin's genes that might help cells return to a younger state. This could lead to better ways to treat diseases.

All I know of you is hammers, us filling your nets in the hundreds. You pluck us from the rocks. Say you are restoring balance. But balance is a word that changes depending on who’s saying it.

But I know hunger, not hate.

Restoration implies a return. But return to what? Before the otters were hunted?
Or before you overfished, warmed currents, brought in chemical tides? Before The Blob, burned its heat into the water and stripped it of nutrients?

You are slowly killing the calcium carbonate we need to form our bodies.

I want to ask: 

Are you fixing us—
or are you fixing your feelings about us?