Upcoming Purple Urchin Dive 7/30/23

[Green Frog]

Now I’m getting jealous! I hope you guys will have a great AND productive day!

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Well, it was a great day out on the coast. The fog lifted early and it was a beautiful sunny day. The wind never really came up like predicted, just a cool breeze. Air temps in the high 60’s. The sea was great too. Stillwater lived up to it’s name once again.
We had about 8 people show up.
We got to work and cleared I believe about 150 - 170 gallons of whole purple urchins. People were entering and exiting the water at different times so it was hard to keep track.
Weight wise the poundage was in the hundreds but nothing was weighed so also hard to tell.
No pics, sorry, I was too busy diving and when I finished up some had left with their limits so the group shot would have been incomplete.
I think we made a little dent, but there’s still millions of them.
I’m not going to give up!
Anyway, I’m looking forward to next time. This is a work in progress.
Next time we’re doing a barbecue and I’m hoping to double or triple attendance, and pull massive amounts of purples out.
Meanwhile between then and now I’m going to work on a dump site because that seems to be a limiting factor, what to do with all of them!

See ya next time, and a huge thank you to everyone that attended.
When the kelp comes back we can be proud thinking we might have had just a little something to do with it.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

One side thing that happened that I thought was pretty cute.
I had a medium sized cabezon following me around as I was collecting, almost getting in the way. At first I thought he was nest guarding but he followed me around where ever I was harvesting and he wasn’t scared.
So I smashed open a few urchins with my rake and of course the sea trout swooped right in to get the floaties, but the cab just sat there and didn’t go after it. So I smashed another one and grabbed a piece of roe and hand fed it to him. He took it!
So then I fed him more, and then he was glued to me. So I’m hoping to see my new little buddy next time. I don’t know if they are territorial and remain in one place for long or if they move around?
I wish I had a go pro.

 

[lattehiatus]

Sounds like it was a great event!

It would be amazing to get a photo of you hand-feeding your cabezon groupie. I had a brown rockfish following me around at Caspar Cove, every time I looked it was perched on a nearby rock watching me, and it didn't move when the surges brought me close to touching it. It wasn't interested in smashed roe, and it never occurred to me it was waiting for Michelin service hand-feeding - missed opportunity.

 

[Green Frog]

Sounds like a great event. My wishes are 1) that I could have been there, or 2) somebody had taken a bunch of pix.
I thought even purple sea urchin roe were a delicacy (for humans, not just for your fish buddies. Even with the small amount of roe from each urchin, the take from 150 gallons would be significant! Otherwise, I’m guessing they could be ground, crushed and used for fertilizer or chicken feed supplement or something???
Congratulations on a successful event.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Sounds like a great event. My wishes are 1) that I could have been there, or 2) somebody had taken a bunch of pix.
I thought even purple sea urchin roe were a delicacy (for humans, not just for your fish buddies. Even with the small amount of roe from each urchin, the take from 150 gallons would be significant! Otherwise, I’m guessing they could be ground, crushed and used for fertilizer or chicken feed supplement or something???
Congratulations on a successful event.

Next time I’m going to delegate a non diver to be in charge of photographing the event. It’s just to much for me to try and dive, dragging Urchin bags onto the beach, dumping urchins in containers, trying to reset my gear for another dive, etc. and then trying to take pics all wet with my phone that was actually in my dry bag at the picnic area a few hundred feet away from the beach. I can’t do it all.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Sounds like a great event. My wishes are 1) that I could have been there, or 2) somebody had taken a bunch of pix.
I thought even purple sea urchin roe were a delicacy (for humans, not just for your fish buddies. Even with the small amount of roe from each urchin, the take from 150 gallons would be significant! Otherwise, I’m guessing they could be ground, crushed and used for fertilizer or chicken feed supplement or something???
Congratulations on a successful event.

Yes, we’re actually working on trying to use them for fertilizer and other things. However, being considered a “game” animal (to some degree) even though they are considered a pest with the overrun and the take upped to 40 gallons per day with no possession limit, as soon as someone makes profit from any game animal is when you run into trouble.
Unless they are sanctioned and have a commercial urchin permit. But those are extremely hard to get.
It takes fish and game soooo long to change rules and come up with implementation on anything, it’s like they are 8-10 years behind the curve. This problem is already going on 10 years and they still have not fully implemented proposals urged by scientific experts than have done actual official hands on studies.
One of my questions is, why is there a bag limit? And the other is, why don’t they have designated dump sites?
I’m in the midst of formulating an email right now to one of the head honcho’s in charge of the purple
Urchin crisis at DFW to discuss some of our key issues.

 

[Green Frog]

IJust asking out of sheer ignorance… is it just the roe that are edible (by humans)? How intensive is the process to extract them? Would it be possible to clean out a bunch of roe and put them up, a la caviar from sturgeon, and keep them for a period of time until your next dive club banquet, etc?
I’m overwhelmed that there can’t be any use for these animals, invasive pests though they may be. Then again good organic fertilizer or animal food additive is a use of them…

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

IJust asking out of sheer ignorance… is it just the roe that are edible (by humans)? How intensive is the process to extract them? Would it be possible to clean out a bunch of roe and put them up, a la caviar from sturgeon, and keep them for a period of time until your next dive club banquet, etc?
I’m overwhelmed that there can’t be any use for these animals, invasive pests though they may be. Then again good organic fertilizer or animal food additive is a use of them…

Yes the row is the only thing edible. It’s very easy to remove. All you do is crack one open like an egg and there will be five sections of roe running down the sides against the inside if the shell. Using a spoon helps to remove the roe cleanly, then it can be handled carefully and rinsed clean of all the ugly stuff.
Some people might be into slurping down all the brown smelly slimy juicy guts and all but I’m not into that. That’s just F’n gross!!
As far as preserving the roe, I’ve never heard of it.
The roe is absolute best when fresh. It needs to be a well fed urchin and the roe needs to be bright yellow. If it looks brown then it’s usually bitter and horrible. However, what I’m finding with the purples is that either they have a bunch of roe and it’s good, or there’s nothing (zombie urchin).
It depends on what part of the cove they came out of. Purple urchins are small. A big one would have a ball (minus the spines) about the size of a baseball. Most are between a baseball and golf ball size. Whereas a large red market urchin would have a ball about the size of a large grapefruit and should have roe to match.
I’m not so much concerned about whether the purples have roe or not, I just want them gone, and my strategy is to clean out an area thoroughly regardless of size or quality.
It’s normally the big reds and blacks that get harvested for the markets. I checked one of those to see what it had and it was pretty pathetic. The purples are stealing all the food so I’m leaving all the reds and blacks alone right now, let them recover.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

My green can is filled with urchins right now from Sunday’s dive, and they are starting to stiiiiiink!!
At least tomorrow is garbage day.