Urchin cull approved for Monterey reef

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I have smashed literally thousands of urchins and collected thousands more. I’m not a novice at this.
I’m going to come up with a special tool just for urchin culling, you’ll see.

Hi Eric,

How is the urchin smasher coming along? My son, a friend and I are looking forward to trying them out. We dove Pt. Lobos last week. There is still lots of kelp inside the cove, but further out the purple urchins are taking over. They need to have several urchin cull weeks there also.

Take care,
Britt Percival

PS; I bought a freedom wing from you. We met at Russian Gulch. It is very comfortable diving with it in cold California water and tropical Hawaiian waters. My son has contacted you about getting one also.
 
Hi Eric,

How is the urchin smasher coming along? My son, a friend and I are looking forward to trying them out. We dove Pt. Lobos last week. There is still lots of kelp inside the cove, but further out the purple urchins are taking over. They need to have several urchin cull weeks there also.

Take care,
Britt Percival

PS; I bought a freedom wing from you. We met at Russian Gulch. It is very comfortable diving with it in cold California water and tropical Hawaiian waters. My son has contacted you about getting one also.
Not Eric but I did hear that Aquarius Dive Shop in Monterey did operate the first urchin specialty training recently and it was sold out. Price was around $300, so I'm hoping the others come in less than that. There will still be work for non-trained divers, so hopefully the program is a big success and becomes standard up and down the coast.
 
I have smashed literally thousands of urchins and collected thousands more. I’m not a novice at this.
I’m going to come up with a special tool just for urchin culling, you’ll see.

You may have inadvertently multiplied -- exponentially -- the number of urchins that you "smashed." Urchins, among other echinoderms, broadcast-spawn sperm and eggs, to reproduce -- especially under stress; and urchins are little more than gonadal tissue, with a tiny animal, added almost as an afterthought.

Jostle a catch bag of urchins and you'll quickly notice a white discharge on the aboral surface (opposite the mouth) of many, which then spreads like a chain reaction = "happy ending" of both eggs and sperm.

Under laboratory conditions, while working at bioassay labs, we either injected them with KCl or outright smashed them to spawn -- and smashing always worked, even out of season; and we had tens of thousands of fertilized ova within days -- pluteus larva, the final stage, just before spines develop, within four weeks or less.

The only safe way of eliminating them is physical removal, which the pencil-necks at Fish and Game don't seem to appreciate.

It also recalls the lamentable efforts in Oz, to eliminate the "crown of thorn" starfish (Acanthaster planci), decades ago, by cutting them into pieces, without giving thought that each segment would simply regenerate an entire sea star . . .
 
You may have inadvertently multiplied -- exponentially -- the number of urchins that you "smashed." Urchins, among other echinoderms, broadcast-spawn sperm and eggs, to reproduce -- especially under stress; and urchins are little more than gonadal tissue, with a tiny anima, almostl as an afterthought.

Logical but inconsistent with my experience. The variable is that fish of all sizes pounce on the urchin sushi before you have a change to pick up a piece and try to hand feed them. The real question is can those eggs survive the fish's digestive system. I'm skeptical but that's just an uninformed guess.
 
Annual spawning occurs from January through March once urchins reach 2 years of age. Reproduction is performed by way of external fertilization in which males release their gametes into the ocean and fertilize female eggs at random (free spawning).
 
Logical but inconsistent with my experience. The variable is that fish of all sizes pounce on the urchin sushi before you have a change to pick up a piece and try to hand feed them. The real question is can those eggs survive the fish's digestive system. I'm skeptical but that's just an uninformed guess.

Even if fish devour a good deal of the orange gonadal tissue, we're still dealing with millions of microscopic eggs and sperm, which escape consumption, carried by the current -- and, no, the tissue won't survive the digestive tract of fish; but in places, where the wholesale practice of smashing urchins has been performed, on the QT (I know of many, over the years), the barrens still seem to spread, nonetheless . . .
 
Annual spawning occurs from January through March once urchins reach 2 years of age. Reproduction is performed by way of external fertilization in which males release their gametes into the ocean and fertilize female eggs at random (free spawning).

Perhaps in Southern California.

"External fertilization" is synonymous with broadcast spawning. The urchins, here, are still in spawnable condition, even if "out of season." I just shipped several dozen to a Canadian laboratory; and they were visibly enjoying happy endings in my catch bag and during packing.

A sacrificial sample, back on land, was brimming with gonadal tissue (looked like plump segments of a tangerine), which appear greatly-reduced, when in non-spawnable condition -- and didn't taste half-bad, on bread . . .
 
You may have inadvertently multiplied -- exponentially -- the number of urchins that you "smashed." Urchins, among other echinoderms, broadcast-spawn sperm and eggs, to reproduce -- especially under stress; and urchins are little more than gonadal tissue, with a tiny animal, added almost as an afterthought.

Jostle a catch bag of urchins and you'll quickly notice a white discharge on the aboral surface (opposite the mouth) of many, which then spreads like a chain reaction = "happy ending" of both eggs and sperm.

Under laboratory conditions, while working at bioassay labs, we either injected them with KCl or outright smashed them to spawn -- and smashing always worked, even out of season; and we had tens of thousands of fertilized ova within days -- pluteus larva, the final stage, just before spines develop, within four weeks or less.

The only safe way of eliminating them is physical removal, which the pencil-necks at Fish and Game don't seem to appreciate.

It also recalls the lamentable efforts in Oz, to eliminate the "crown of thorn" starfish (Acanthaster planci), decades ago, by cutting them into pieces, without giving thought that each segment would simply regenerate an entire sea star . . .
The reason the culling didn't start right away was the need to perform an experiment to see whether the urchins need to be removed or if culling with hammers is sufficient. They selected control and experimental areas and culled urchins to various densities per square meter. As I understand it, the kelp came back more in the culled regions, though I have not seen the data myself. Once that was established they are permitting culls in a larger area.
 
Price was around $300, so I'm hoping the others come in less than that.
Hmm. I thought this would be a pretty cool and interesting thing to get onboard with, but this is where I have to reconsider. I'm kind of worn out on the mentality of paying a few hundred dollars to voluntarily do someone else's work.
 
Not Eric but I did hear that Aquarius Dive Shop in Monterey did operate the first urchin specialty training recently and it was sold out. Price was around $300, so I'm hoping the others come in less than that. There will still be work for non-trained divers, so hopefully the program is a big success and becomes standard up and down the coast.

wnissen,

Are you saying that all the volunteers had to sign up for the $300 urchin specialty training in order to remove or smash the urchins? That will eliminate most of us from participating in the Monterey area. I know that up north they did not have any paid training requirements. So I guess it's the north coast and Fort Bragg for us.
 
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