Inaugural Mendocino Coast Purple Urchin Festival seeks to help rebalance troubled marine ecosystem

They’ll be serving purple urchin this weekend on the Mendocino Coast, offering creamy seafood morsels cooked up in a variety of preparations, savory and sweet.

It’s part of an effort to spread the word that the abundant urchins — the edible parts of them — are delicious, and that consuming more of them can help restore balance to a troubled North Coast marine ecosystem.

Known in the food world as uni, the yellow-orange meat will be featured on the menus of at least eight restaurants participating in the first-ever, three-day Mendocino Coast Purple Urchin Festival.

The event, which begins Friday, is part feast, part fundraiser, part educational seminar and part recruitment fair.

The giant sea stars that once kept purple urchin populations in check have mostly died away over the past decade, contributing to an urchin population boom that shows no signs of abating. It has had decimating consequences for the coast’s kelp forests, and some of the other creatures that call them home, including red abalone.

In the local absence of natural urchin predators, such as sea otters and large sea stars, festival organizers hope hungry humans might pick up the slack, and they’re using the weekend to promote that cause.

“Until there’s a predator, we’re it,” said Sheila Semans, executive director of the Fort Bragg-based Noyo Center for Marine Science, a participant and beneficiary of the event.

Semans is among the major advocates promoting an urchin fishery in the region and working with stakeholders to develop the infrastructure to do so.

But building consumer demand for the salty-sweet substance scooped from inside spiky urchin shells is just one way scientists and others are working to rebalance the coastal ecosystem in hopes of facilitating recovery of its dominant plant species: bull kelp.

Urchin removal by commercial and recreational divers at select sites on the Mendocino Coast has continued for several years, though the coronavirus pandemic and funding limitations have slowed the pace.

A $2 million boost in federal funding obtained through Rep. Jared Huffman for kelp restoration in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary will help cover some additional urchin removal efforts there later this year, among other projects.

Recent attempts also have been made to plant kelp spores and juvenile plants on the floor of Albion Cove on the Mendocino Coast using techniques developed at San Jose State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

And work continues at Friday Harbor Labs at the University of Washington to breed pycnopodia helianthoides, or sunflower sea stars, the huge, multi-armed predators that once consumed urchins en masse.

“There’s a lot in the works right now, and there’s lots of good ideas,” said Tristin McHugh, Kelp Project director for The Nature Conservancy in Fort Bragg.

But the “big picture right now is just evaluating tools of restoration — really understanding what can we possibly do to maybe turn the tables,” she said.

Though work in many areas is advancing, the urchins still have the upper hand, moving back into some coves that have been cleared and quickly consuming baby kelp seeded on “green gravel” and planted in Albion Cove. A second attempt at embedding young kelp is planned for August under different conditions, said Scott Hamilton, associate professor of ichthyology — the branch of zoology that deals with fishes — at the Moss Landing labs.

A group at Sonoma State University also is working on kelp planting strategies and expects to place some in Drake’s Bay later this year, said Rietta Hohman, Kelp Restoration Program coordinator at the Greater Farallones Association. But it remains experimental, part of “a very new field,” she said.

Kelp forest rebound

There is some good news.

A strong, nutrient-rich, cold water upwelling last year along the North Coast produced highly favorable conditions that allowed for a resurgence of bull kelp in certain areas, pointing to potential strongholds that could factor in future restoration efforts.

Filling in gaps from decades of satellite imagery and aircraft surveys once conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy used 16 drone pilots to survey 90 miles of coast, from Point Arena to Timber Gulch, located south of Fort Ross.

At some points, there was three times the bull kelp as there had been a year earlier, Vienna Saccomanno, Ocean Science associate, said late last year.

“It is important to note that tripling or doubling something when there wasn’t much there to begin with doesn’t mean we’re back to normal or the system has recovered,” Saccomanno said. “In 2021 we estimate that we’re still about 75% below the historical annual average extent. So in other words, we still need about four times more kelp than we saw in 2021 to just be in line with the historical average.”

It’s also true that a general, global trend toward warming oceans makes defending bull kelp strongholds that much more important, she said.

The large, canopy-forming algae once defined the waters off the North Coast, until its abrupt collapse during a marine heat wave that started in 2014, in the wake of pervasive sea star wasting syndrome and an explosion of voracious purple urchins that emerged from the rocks and began mowing down all plant life.

More than 95% of the bull kelp canopy disappeared by 2019, with the greatest impact along the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. The loss of habitat and competition from purple urchins — their density more than 60 times what it had been — laid waste to the region’s iconic red abalone fishery. The state closed the popular fishery indefinitely in 2018.

It also devastated the commercial red urchin fishery centered around Fort Bragg, where a relatively small but hearty band of divers had harvested the larger urchins for their uni — until many of those species started to starve.

The smaller purple urchins that took over the ocean floor created what are known as “urchin barrens.” Though plentiful, the purple urchins were not considered large enough to be harvested or processed efficiently as food. In addition, their ability to persist in starvation mode — as what some call “zombie” urchins — meant even those collected were likely to have too little uni to be worthwhile.

Now serving purple urchins

That’s where a company like Urchinomics comes into play.

Founded after the 2011 tsunami in Japan upended the marine ecosystem there, the company’s stated mission is to remove overgrazing urchins from the ocean floor, fatten them up for six to 10 weeks in captivity with special feed, and supply urchins to restaurants globally — in the process helping to restore ecological balance, boost local economies and promote sustainable food systems.

The company, with North American headquarters in Canada, has operations in Norway and Japan and established a pilot aquaculture site near Oxnard about six months ago, said Denise MacDonald, global brand marketing lead. Some of the uni to be served this weekend was farmed at the Port Hueneme facility.

But the goal is to get a foothold on the North Coast, with both Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg as prospective locations, though infrastructure needs like seawater intake mean the new facility can’t go just anywhere.

Semans has been looking for research and demonstration sites in the Fort Bragg area, possibly affiliated with the marine center on its land at the former Georgia-Pacific Mill site.

City officials also have rallied around the notion of growing a “blue economy” to offset losses in traditional fishing and logging industries.

Urchinomics has been behind a series of demonstrations and tasting events in recent years designed to expose chefs and the dining public to the unique taste and versatility of purple urchin uni.

Some of the chefs behind the festival also have worked to integrate purple urchin uni regularly into their menus.

But MacDonald says harvesting has to be done at a large scale — about 100 tons a year — to make a significant impact, which would require ramping up as fast as possible. The company is still determining if they can make that work on the North Coast.

Meanwhile, the firm is trying to help raise awareness “around kelp and the kelp crisis and the urchin barrens,” all of which will be part of the weekend festival, MacDonald said.

“There’s different issues. It’s just like a little piece of the puzzle: eating our way through the problem.”

That solution alone won’t be enough, Semans said, but it’s one way to help.

“Will we restore balance is still a big question,” she said. “I think it will take all of these things. We absolutely need the pycnopodia (sea stars) back. Until that predator’s back, we’re the predator.

“We’re also working on trying to develop a captive breeding program for red abalone … If we’re going to have balance, I think it takes efforts on all fronts.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.