I know... It's a sad thing, that's one of my favorite things to do up here. The starfish are coming back with a vengeance though, so the sea urchin population should start dying back a bit and leave some more food for the abs. I give it 2-3 years max and we will be back at it again.
Good to hear!
I considered going on a "Sea Urchin Hunt" dive, but I've read that manually reducing the populations didn't work out too well, so decided to save myself the (very likely quite literal) pain. I'll just be over hear rooting for the sea stars...