Discover a kina barren

Fishing effort, day after day, century after century, has changed the shape of this place. It’s still heaving with reef fish, but the predators are gone.

Produced by New Zealand Geographic

It’s still resplendent with sargassum weed, but kina that were once devoured by snapper and other reef predators are tearing holes through the fabric of the ecosystem.

It’s obvious where an ecosystem is out of balance—diversity is replaced with monotony and absence. A single species will dominate. It’s started here already, as a result of over-fishing, but likely also because of changes in the patterns of currents that wash through this archipelago.

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