SEA URCHIN DIVING

1979, I began the greatest adventure of my life. For four years I dove Click here: Sea Urchins off the California Coast. I had fished commercially for 3 years prior to that time on the east coast. I started out fishing from Gloucester, MA I began fishing Sea scallops on scallop Dredge boats
as first a hookup man then a winchman for 3 years. We fished mainly Georges Banks and sometimes the Phebbenes.
You may have heard of Georges Banks from the movie, Perfect Storm? Three years and they were mostly years fishing scallops but I also fished on longline boats, drag boats for shrimp and fluke, (types of bottom fish similar to flounder)and black cod in Alaska. But that is another story.
Urchins are considered a delicacy in Japan and are also eaten in other parts of the world. An urchin has 6 rows of eggs called uni in
Japanese. They are invertabraes, covered in spines and cling to the bottom of the ocean floor. They eat kelp. Urchins vary in weight and size. California urchins probably ranged between 1/4 pound to 1 and 1/2 pounds. At that time urchins brought a market price to the boat between 20 and up to possibly 30 cents a pound depending on quality and other factors.
A good diver could pick 1000 to 2000 lbs of urchins in a good day at the channel islands and 500 lbs was a pretty fair day for the coast. Divers used what is called a hookah rig or hose which was usually 300 feet long or more. A compressor on the boat supplied the compressed air and through the hose or hookah, the same principles of physics applied as if you were diving with bottles. We used 3/8 inch wetsuits.
The best sea urchins are usually found in the thickest kelp
...

Click here: kelp cutter

Sea urchins are considered parasites to kelp cutters and can wipe out fields of kelp. Kelp is a very big industry and harvested for many uses.
There are a couple types of tools used to pick urchins. They are basicly designed to keep the divers hand far enough away from the urchin to keep the diver from getting spined while he is in the process of picking. Invariably everyone was spined now and then primarily in the knees, when starting out. I once drove a spine under my thumbnail to the bottom. It did not start to hurt until I came up from under the pressure. At 60 feet you are under a great deal of pressure and you have 3 lungfuls of pressurised air in your lungs, which means if you surface quickly and hold your breath, your lungs will explode in a very short period of time. We usually dove under 100 feet and tried to follow the dive tables by at least, starting out deep, and working in shallow to keep from getting bent or decompression sickness Click here: The Bends

A metal hoop with a net suspended from it was used to collect the spineballs. An inner tube was used as a float bag and these bags could have anywhere between 200 to 500 hundred pounds in them. It is quite an art to learn how to navigate a 300 lb plus bag of urchins through kelp that is sometimes 3 foot deep. Once at San Nicholas Island I picked one bag of sea urchins that weighed 998 lbs. when it hit the dock. It took 2 float bags to get it to the surface. Much of the weight is lost during transportation because the urchin releases it's water.
Diving the Channel Islands is absolutely amazingly beautiful and a lot of the time visibility is terrific. The coast, however, was usually murky. The many varied types of aquatic life is undescribable.
My first day of diving urchins went some thing like this. I dove to about 35 or 40 feet and there was maybe 6 inches of visibility. A strong surge made it seem like I was in a washing machine. I was disoriented and felt very uncomfortable, so I went up to the boat and dropped my picking tool. The rest of the day was spent looking for my picking tool and prying urchins of the rocks with a diving knife. Most of the time I was wrapped up in kelp, disorientated and a few times ended up in my picking bag. At the end of the day I had picked about 50 lbs of urchins and made 5 dollars. I was exhausted and discouraged.
The next day I dove on another boat and did not fair much better. We were diving for Sea Agar, a type of seaweed. We were diving right off the breakwater in very shallow water and with a very strong surge, like a washing machine. Things were going along fine when I felt a tug on my mask and noticed somehow fishing line had looped around my mask, you know the clear monofilament. I did not have a knife and so I was having to unloop it from my mask when I felt a tug and realized it was also wrapped around my flipper. I knew if I panicked I was dead. After what seemed like eternity I unravelled myself from the fishing line and almost instantly found myself being dragged along the bottom by the hose hooked to my regulator and tied to my weightbelt. The boat was dragging anchor and to make it worse we had a dive tender someone who's topside and supposed to be tending the boat. He was laid back without a clue. Needless to say that was his last trip. I worked all day and picked 2 hundred pounds that day and made 20 dollars. Needless to say I was discouraged.
On my third day I was at Santa Barbara Island and picked 600 pounds of urchins and was estatic. The best day I had, many years later, was at San Nicholas Island
and I brought up 2,998 lbs of urchins. We hit what was called a blackout. But that pales in comparison to my good friend and mentor who is still diving and fishing in Alaska. He once dove 5000 pounds a day for 3 days.If I had not met Mark I would have never dove. Here is a picture of his boat in Alaska 29 years later.
Click here: Ketchikan Daily News | Mark's Boat

During those years we dove Catalina and San Clemente, Santa Cruz Island, Santa Rosa Island,And San Miguel.
But under the water was always best..We encountered every type of sea creature almost everyday. They claim the the sheepshead fish eats urchins and I once swam with them in caves off San miguel Island. They were twice the size of me!! A Click here: Sea Elephant swam
straight toward me once at San Nicholas Island, I just froze and he just swam on by Thankfully.

Click here: Garibaldi are beautiful fish


But the Giant Moray Eel
are fun to feed and they will follow you around. All the fish love urchins and when you accidentally break one open the fish swarm like crazy. As vicious as the eels look, these morey eels are rather friendly , but don't stick your hand in some dark hole!!
My best friends under water were the seals . They are like playful little dogs. Some of them liked to pull stunts like pulling on the dive hoses or trying to untie your bag full of urchins. They would swim straight at you then veer off a second before they hit you. Sometimes they would blow bubbles in our face as if mimicking us. This seal looks friendly enough. By the way Ever seen an underwater bug?

The first day that I actually dove was a little rough. I went under the boat with shark attack Jack and swam around with one of the divers at a depth of around 35 feet. It was great. When we got back on board Allen wanted to know if I wanted to go to the bottom about 75-80 feet. Of course I did but Jack declined to take me so I went down with Allen.
I had to switch weight belts and I usually use around 30 pounds of weight but used Jack's belt which had 50 pounds. When I jumped in I could hardly stay afloat. We swam to the anchor line proceeded downward.
The water was murky with poor visibility and when I hit the bottom like a stone I was very uncomfortable not at first but the feeling kind of crept up on me. My mask was leaking and I was sucking water in around my regulator and did not have the sense to adjust it properly. I motioned to Al let's go up and he just shook his head and motioned for me to relax. I was not capable of relaxing and started to drag myself up the anchorline at the same time fear was overcoming me causing me to breath harder, hyperventilating, thinking I was not getting enough air, when in actuality I was getting too much oxygen. I was doing the one thing that will get a person killed quicker than anything, panick. About 40 feet below I dropped Jack's belt and popped like cork to the surface screaming as I had been taught to blow out the air in my lungs to keep them from exploding then vomiting what felt like half the ocean. Jack was hollering call the coast guard he's embolized. But I was alright and Al came up with Jack's weight belt on his shoulder where I had dropped it.I learned a lot that day about the ocean and myself. The men I worked with gave me a real good talking to that night about their experiences and the next day we went for another dive and did everything right.

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