The Urchin and The Diver
The red sea urchin's reproductive organ, uni, is a golden delicacy hidden within the spiny exterior. Santa Barbara is the center of the California urchin fishery with over half of the state’s sea urchin landings, the amount of sea urchins harvested commercially. Though there are two sea urchin markets in California, red and purple, red sea urchin makes up around 99% of the urchin fishery in the state due to the size and quality of its uni.
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Kim Selkoe, Executive Director of Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara , says these red urchins aren’t as much to blame for depleting kelp as their purple counterpart is. “The red urchin fishery isn’t necessarily helping our kelp forests. It’s hard to know what would happen if we completely stopped, but the red urchins are not really critical to kelp forest.”
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The purple urchins, on the other hand, are overpopulated and depleting kelp. With these urchins claiming on 1% of the urchin fishery here, Selkoe is working to create solutions. “We have been writing grants to propose a pilot program that would pay fishermen to remove purple urchins, even if they have no fishery value.” Due to the small size of the purple urchin, the market for them is almost nonexistent. Other ideas Selkoe has discussed are “fattening them up” with kelp and seaweed to be brought to market as a whole product or using the roe from medium sized urchin to make more processed products like uni butter.
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On a typical dive day, Liquornik is up at 5 a.m. to check the weather. If all looks good, he is at the Santa Barbara Harbour by 6:30 a.m. “When I was younger, we used to get out a lot earlier,” he chuckles. By 9:30 or 10 a.m., after a two-ish hour boat ride to the Islands, he is in the water.
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"On a good day, plans A and B work. On a bad day, you might get pretty far down the alphabet in terms plans,” Liquornik said. Plans refers to anchor drop spots. “There is a lot of jumping in the water, looking around, scouting if the weather is bad or if the urchin is not good.” He’ll dive until around 4 or 5 p.m., but ideally tries to get back to the port before dark. The uni isn’t dissected until it is processed or hits the Saturday Fishermen’s Market in the Santa Barbara Harbor. Until then, the intact urchin call East Beach home.
Urchin diver Henry Liqournik has been up before the sun and down in the kelp beds before 10 a.m. for 36 years. Santa Barbara coastal kelp beds are home to some of the most desired sea urchin in the world and Liquornik has taken full advantage of his home supply. While planning to attend Santa Barbara City College’s marine diving program to pursue a career in oilfield diving, he saw his brother’s classmates diving for urchins and making more money while at it. So, right out of high school, Liquornik started diving for sea urchins and never looked back. “Back then, there was quite a bit of seasonality to it. The Japanese market would guide maybe a few months out of the year in the winter when the price would go way up.”
While Japan still accounts for about 90% of the worldwide demand, domestic sales of sea urchin have been increasing in California and specifically in Santa Barbara. Liquornik believes that the quality of local uni has been the cause of this spread. “Our processors have started to keep their A-grade stuff here instead of exporting to Japan which helps a lot. You get a bad or marginal piece of urchin, and you'll probably never want to eat it again,” he said.
Harry Liquornik and team's dive boat.
Percent of Landings* in Red Sea Urchin Fishery in California
*Landings refers to the amount of sea urchins harvested commercially.