Urchin barrens and spear fishing?

[tracydr]

That could be an option, or catch a lot of urchins and ship them to Japan. I guess Sea Otters didn't work. More sheepshead? Lobster? I don't know. Do wolf eel eat urchins?

 

[weiland]

Hmmm...I'm thinking about just stabbing 35 (ca regs) of the purple ones anytime I dive outside of a restricted area. I wonder if there's any issue with that?

 

[Tjack]

A rock hammer is supposed to work well for culling urchins. The Sheephead will follow you around like puppy dogs to eat whats left of the squashed urchins.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Are you guys talking about the kind of urchins that yield what sushi bars charge a lot of money for as uni (also used in Italian cuisine)? If so, I'd much rather eat the urchin than the sheephead, etc.

 

[fnfalman]

There is a spot at Santa Barbara that had nothing but brittlestars. I've heard it from old timer divers and seen it myself, so maybe at that particular spot it always had been like that.

 

[Tjack]

Unfortunately these are not the urchins that produce Uni, the edible gonads so loved in Japan and elsewhere. The problem species in SoCal are the smaller Purple Sea Urchin (Stronglocentrotus purpuratus) if I'm not mistaken?

Interesting that too many urchins are part of the problem in California. In the Caribbean too few urchins is allowing algae to cover the coral reefs. It's all about the balance.

Divers spearing sheephead and cleaning out the lobsters ain't helping that balance. Here is a thread regarding the shenanigans going on with the current lobster season posted by MaxBottomtime

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/so...ent-active-southern-california-lobster-o.html

One site we dove in Sep. was Goldfish Bowl, Anacapa. A total brittlestar barren now, back in 2010 I noted brittlestars there but had never seen them carpet a dive site like this year.

Here is a related thread I fond, started by JackCrow

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/socal/424880-extremely-disappointing-channel-islands-weekend.html