Eco-Culinary Activism
Eat Your Pest
by Robby Bruce
We are lucky to live in an area that is abundant in local organic and healthful food sources. A rural population and a bounty of farmers give us a security in food supply that is not available in many other parts of the country. Our Mediterranean climate, our forests, and the oceans are also a source of sustenance through foraging.
The ocean, especially, can supply us with a wide variety of choices, from plant matter such as kelp to animal protein. As the Southeast Alaska native Tlingit say, “When the tide is out, the table is set.” For practical purposes, almost everything you see at low tide is edible and enjoyed by various cultures around the world. One of the unlikely edible creatures found at low tide are sea urchins.
The part of the urchin that is edible is called uni, considered a delicacy in Japanese cuisine. Uni is growing in popularity in America primarily in sushi bars, but it is also increasingly prevalent in a variety of nouveau cuisine. Its flavor is most often described as creamy—rich and buttery, melt-in-your-mouth, with a taste of the sea without being fishy. According to researcher Phillip Hayward, a Japanese colleague of his said that “Eating raw sea urchin is like sharing an intimate kiss with the ocean.”
The use of uni as a food source also has a long tradition in Europe, from Norway to southern Spain and along the Mediterranean coast. In these regions, uni is often consumed in its most basic form—raw, fresh out of the shell, with a sip of the local liquor, cognac, pernod, or ouzo. Uni has also been combined with caviar, spread on toast or crostini, or used with such neutral tastes as eggs or rice as a backdrop to accentuate the flavor of the sea. Much the way anchovies are used as an additive, uni is used to add a delicate richness to sauces for pasta, risotto, or ceviche. In the South Seas, urchin is a staple of the islanders’ diet. It is high in Omega 3 fatty acids, low in calories, and reportedly an aphrodisiac (there is some evidence that it contains chemicals similar to cannabis that, when ingested, can cause a state of euphoria).
For many years, the California coast has enjoyed a productive commercial fishery for red urchin, supplying the domestic and export markets and providing a good living for many families in our small coastal communities. A healthy and vibrant kelp forest is essential to productive coastal fisheries. Kelp forests are nurseries of the ocean. They sequester carbon, dampen wave related erosion, produce oxygen, and provide a food source for humans. However, the kelp forests on the Pacific Coast have been struggling with warmer than normal ocean temperatures for some time now. Then in 2013, a mysterious wasting disease began wiping out the sea star populations. There is some evidence that both temperature increase and the wasting disease are both linked to long term climate change.
The sea star happens to be the only real predator in our area of the hardy and voracious purple sea urchin. With the sea star numbers devastated, the purple urchins increased by 60 times their typical numbers. The main food source for purple urchin is our abundant kelp forests, so within a few years, 90% of those kelp forests were devoured. In many areas, underwater surveys showed nothing but beds of purple urchins, with little life of any other kind. However, this hardy species will eat almost anything, including each other, to survive. They can even go dormant if food sources disappear, living for years without sustenance.
Kelp is also the primary food source for both the abalone and the red urchin populations. In 2016 and 2017, after the sea-star die-off and the destruction of the kelp forests, the recreational abalone fishery began to land a record number of large-sized abalone on the Mendocino coast, as the marine mollusks moved up out of the deep to the intertidal zone in search of food. Though their shells were much bigger than normal (because these animals were more mature), the bodies were tiny and emaciated, evidence of starvation. By 2018, the sport abalone fishery was shut down and has been closed ever since.
As John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” The loss of the sea-star is an example of how removing a keystone predator upsets the balance of an entire ecosystem. Essential to our local ocean ecosystem, the restoration of the kelp forests will have formidable obstacles. We can hope the sea-star will recover and re-establish its critical place in maintaining the balance of the ocean ecosystem. There is certainly no shortage of their preferred food, the purple urchin.
Another possible solution would be to introduce another apex predator of the purple urchin, such as the sea otter. Once plentiful from the Aleutians to Mexico along the Pacific coast, they were hunted to near extinction by fur traders in the 18th and 19th centuries. Otters eat urchin but also many other kinds of shellfish, so it is wise to look carefully and cautiously at reintroduction to avoid unintended consequences, even if it is an indigenous species.
We all know that the primary global apex predator is human beings. We have a long history of being efficient when it comes to resource extraction, often to the detriment of our environment and ourselves. Enter Urchinomics, a company that specifically focuses on resource extraction, but with the intention to improve habitat and provide food. Their goal is to “restore ocean habitats to feed the world.” Brian Tsuyoshi Takaeda, CEO and founder of Urchinomics, explains, “Urchinomics is about turning an environmental challenge into an economic, ecological, and social opportunity.” Urchins are resilient, versatile, and destructive, so harvesting them provides the company with a restorative seafood product while helping the kelp forests recover from their decimation.
Urchinomics capitalizes on using both aquaculture and commercial fishing capabilities. Often these activities are in opposition to each other, but in the Urchinomics system, the fishers collect the urchin under the authority of their commercial dive permits. The urchins are then transported to a shore-based facility where, over a 10 week period, they are fed a nutrient-rich feed designed to maximize growth. The uni is then processed and entered into the commercial domestic and export markets, and sold at a profit. One of the underlying objectives of Urchinomics is to restore coastal kelp forests, and to support that effort, they return a portion of profits for urchin eradication, outreach, and education. Full circle.
Urchinomics is active in many places worldwide, such as Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. Here in Northern California, Urchinomics has formed a partnership with the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg and UC Davis at their Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory. In this trial phase, the purple urchins are harvested out of Noyo Harbor, transported to the aquaculture facilities at the marine laboratory, and made ready for market. “The trial was very successful, and Urchinomics has recently obtained the lease on an aquaculture facility in Bodega Bay to start commercial production,” says Sheila Seamans, executive director of the Noyo Center for Marine Science. Sheila explains that the Noyo Center will help administer the funds for kelp recovery, and the hope is that it might, in the future, be a source of income for promoting other research.
The Noyo Center for Marine Science is an organization based on the Mendocino coast dedicated to “advancing ocean conservation through education, exploration, and experience.” The Noyo Center has recently opened the downtown Discovery Center at 338 North Main Street in Fort Bragg, as well as an informational center called the Crows Nest on the north side of the Fort Bragg coastal trail. The Noyo Center has a goal of opening an aquarium/research center on the coastal trail site as an economic driver for the coast through research, education, and tourism.
The Noyo Center for Marine Science is also a partner in the “Help the Kelp” campaign that includes California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Reefcheck, the Greater Farrallones Association, UC Davis, the Ocean Protection Council, and the Watermen’s Alliance. This is a collaborative effort to hire commercial divers and utilize volunteer citizen scientists to remove urchins from designated conservation areas, to investigate the most efficient methods for removal, and to monitor the success of those methods.
The restoration of the balance of our ocean habitat is going to take a combination of all our resources. If we can turn the over-abundance of the purple sea urchin into an economic boost for our coastal communities and environmental salvation for our oceans, then the eco/culinary activist adage “eat your pest” will be part of the solution. So everyone please—eat up, eat uni, and kiss the ocean.
Find out more about Noyo Center for Marine Science, the Help the Kelp program, and how to get involved as a citizen scientist at NoyoCenter.org.
Robby Bruce is a long time Mendocino County resident, commercial fisherman, and general man of the sea. He has served on the board of the Noyo Center for Marine Science for three years.
