Urchin cull approved for Monterey reef

[Bigbella]

I would think where not to swing is the issue.

Hit the spiky urchin; not the rock or your finger -- that's about it. Better yet, physically remove them and place in a compost heap.

It is not a question for the Ages.

For 300.00 -- better be the nicest f**king hammer I have ever seen -- something from Valhalla, not some Harbor Freight p.o.s, which corrodes before your eyes. . . .

 

[MichaelMc]

Ogun War Hammer

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

View attachment 667578
Ogun War Hammer

Ha ha ha ha, he said “warhammer”

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The $285 or $300 class take your pick.
It’s private dive shops charging this?
What do they do with the money?
Does it go for some research cause or is it just a money grab that they are using to fortify their slowing dive shop business?
If they want people to get involved and smash urchins why not just sell them the hammer at cost or specify at least which one they need to buy then get DFW to hold a free seminar?
How F-ing hard is it to identify and smash an urchin?
Is this class about creating “Elitist Leaders” that get to allow underlings such as myself to “help” with the efforts?
How many of these people willing to pay $300 dollars never hunted anything in their lives and have never even had a fishing license?
I know I don’t have $300 to drop on some class that’s supposed to teach me how to smash urchins, which I’ve been doing the whole time.
Maybe I should teach a class, I’ll charge $200 and it will be a smoking deal!
It’s not even a ligitimate government sponsored scientific based class that I see, unless someone can prove me wrong then I’ll take back what I said.
Maybe that’s what people are seeing.
To me in looks like a bunch of elitist Bay Area yuppies with money who happen to dive and attaching themselves to a cause to look good and buy a feeling of importance whilst paying $300 in an exclusive offer to attain that elite title, which scumbags like me could not justify paying.
$300 is a lot of airfills and hammers BTW.
And a Harbor Freight POS hammer works just fine too.
Another elitist crack.
When I was doing organized urchin cull dives up north in Mendo we would have a morning briefing that took about 30 minutes on what to do, indentification, what not to smash or take, to be carefull, etc.
It was free.

 

[MichaelMc]

The info videos up thread mentioned contacting G2KR if the cost of the class by local instructors was too much. They did not want that stopping people that really wanted to help. Also from the video, apparently Reef Check or AAUS divers just need the online part of the class, but I've not heard back on that.

It looks like they are still getting instructors up to speed and have only had a few classes so far. Which seem to be for hammers-on-the-urchins divers, not some supposed elitist leaders extolling a horde of down trodden worker divers. Keith seems out on the reef most weekends hammering urchins and looking at the big picture.

BigBella wanted the fancy hammer, so I found one. Here's one at Harbor Freight of the type G2KR described: Welding/Chipping Hammer

ETA:
The fish and game rule change, that G2KR got for this experiment, plus a fishing license clears you to cull urchins at tankers reef. To document for fish and game that such culling by the community of divers helps without hurting other things, G2KR is conducting a careful experiment in the survey grid that they and Reef Check have laid out with cables. Various state divers are monitoring the effects on tankers reef of this intervention. To cull in the grid, G2KR asks that you get trained.

Periodic status has been appearing here: https://www.facebook.com/UrchinsKelpOtters/

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The info videos up thread mentioned contacting G2KR if the cost of the class by local instructors was too much. They did not want that stopping people that really wanted to help. Also from the video, apparently Reef Check or AAUS divers just need the online part of the class, but I've not heard back on that.

It looks like they are still getting instructors up to speed and have only had a few classes so far. Which seem to be for hammers-on-the-urchins divers, not some supposed elitist leaders extolling a horde of down trodden worker divers. Keith seems out on the reef most weekends hammering away and looking at the big picture.

BigBella wanted the fancy hammer, so I found one. Here's one at Harbor Freight of the type G2KR described:
Welding/Chipping Hammer

Just a word of advice.
Make sure the handle on your welding hammer is long enough that you don’t accidentally get urchin spines through your glove and into the front of your fingers that are wrapped around the hammer handle. I personally do not think that the short all metal slag chipping hammers with the wire wrapped handle is long enough to be a safe working tool for smashing urchins. I also have a “Tomahawk” slag hammer which is a professional version that has a longer hammer but that is only available at real welding supply shops, not Home Depot. I was and still am a weldor (a welder is the machine) so I know about slag hammers.
I picked a ball peen hammer because they have enough weight to deliver a crushing blow in one effort and the handle is long enough to keep your fingers out of the way. The hammer head is also fairly streamlined and can be used on both faces plus it can be used as a tamper with the top of the hammer head. This gives you several options to avoid fatigue and then mishaps.
If anybody thinks getting urchin spines in your knuckles is an amateur move, try burning three tanks and smashing urchins for 3-4 hours and tell me you don’t get tired with your arms and hands like jello, plus surge swing you around trying to maintain position while in 5-6 feet of water in the intertidal zone. We work from the beach out.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Standard all metal slag hammer
Tomahawk slag hammer
Ball peen hammer set up with hockey stick tape and clip/lanyard.

 

[Akimbo]

Phfft, armatures.

Seriously, a BFK or a drywall ax/hammer are better tools than a maul, stainless or otherwise. Crack them open without pulverizing them and let the fish do the rest.

 

[wnissen]

The $285 or $300 class take your pick.
It’s private dive shops charging this?
What do they do with the money?
Does it go for some research cause or is it just a money grab that they are using to fortify their slowing dive shop business?
If they want people to get involved and smash urchins why not just sell them the hammer at cost or specify at least which one they need to buy then get DFW to hold a free seminar?
How F-ing hard is it to identify and smash an urchin?
Is this class about creating “Elitist Leaders” that get to allow underlings such as myself to “help” with the efforts?
How many of these people willing to pay $300 dollars never hunted anything in their lives and have never even had a fishing license?
I know I don’t have $300 to drop on some class that’s supposed to teach me how to smash urchins, which I’ve been doing the whole time.
Maybe I should teach a class, I’ll charge $200 and it will be a smoking deal!
It’s not even a ligitimate government sponsored scientific based class that I see, unless someone can prove me wrong then I’ll take back what I said.
Maybe that’s what people are seeing.
To me in looks like a bunch of elitist Bay Area yuppies with money who happen to dive and attaching themselves to a cause to look good and buy a feeling of importance whilst paying $300 in an exclusive offer to attain that elite title, which scumbags like me could not justify paying.
$300 is a lot of airfills and hammers BTW.
And a Harbor Freight POS hammer works just fine too.
Another elitist crack.
When I was doing organized urchin cull dives up north in Mendo we would have a morning briefing that took about 30 minutes on what to do, indentification, what not to smash or take, to be carefull, etc.
It was free.

Full disclosure, I am really excited to take the class.

Some folks believe it is really important to make sure the intervention one is making in a natural system is effective in achieving its primary purpose, while minimizing side effects. I think that takes more than 30 minutes of training. It’s a different model than Mendocino, you can call it elitist if you want.

As for the cost, I’d say it’s the same market as folks who buy your acclaimed artisanal backplates. If they can afford $500 for a backplate that’s not being produced anymore and a wing that is out of stock for months at a time, they can afford a $300 class. It’s not like any of the dive ships or instructors are making money hand over first. They mostly seem to be going out of business. It’s worth it to me to scientifically do a cull and learn something about the effect of the intervention on a large scale.

 

[Bigbella]

Not to belabor the point; but I still think that this culling effort, by destroying urchins, will simply magnify the problem; become an absolute nightmare. Without their physical removal to a compost heap, this will prove to be a fool's errand.

To give some perspective, urchins are already sexually mature at about 25 mm -- tiny; can live upwards of thirty years, if left to their devices; and while there is a general breeding period, from Washington to Northern Baja waters (roughly September through May) -- large reproductive populations are often found through July; they remain capable of breeding, by broadcast spawn -- often as a stress response.

Hammering neighbors to oblivion certainly strikes me as a stressful event; and I've witnessed concurrent spawn as a result of hammer-culling efforts, in the past. Environmentally, they only seem chemically sensitive to chlorine, at 0.05 ppm, which serves to immobilize the sperm; and frequent die-offs occur near sewage outfalls, where it is commonly used as a disinfectant, in treated effluent.

Private culling efforts at Sea Ranch, Salt Point and environs, over the last two years, simply produced a massive young-turk population of 20-25 mm breeding urchins, on their previously denuded real estate, as I had witnessed last January.

Additionally, we were easily able to achieve urchin fertilization last Wednesday, at our office, from supposedly non-breeding samples collected the previous weekend; nothing sophisticated -- the equivalent of middle school science taught by a apathetic P.E. teacher,

Variously, we injected a few with 0.5M KCl; injured a couple; and others, injected with 7-10 ml of air. All were actively spawning within a minute -- looked like the last reel of Caligula. We later saw characteristic evidence of radial holoblastic cleavage, within hours, under light microscopy.

We supply urchins for bioassay purposes, through most of the year; and I' can give you a guess why: because they still capable of spawning; or they wouldn't be shipped; and this initial fertilization crap can even be left to an intern, the slow one, almost incapable of reading the hashmarks on a syringe; it's that simple . . .