An unknown pathogen that eats the flesh of sea urchins could wipe out an entire population.

A mysterious epidemic has begun in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, which can destroy all sea urchins, and possibly coral reefs. It destroys the tissues of animals, from which only skeletons remain. Scientists suspect that the pathogenic ciliary parasite, a single-celled microorganism that wiped out the entire population of sea urchins in the Caribbean in 1983, was to blame. Scientists are calling for the urgent creation of uninfected broodstocks of hedgehogs so that they can be returned to the oceans after the epidemic ends.