 
 
(Dave Rudie): So these are the local sea urchins that
the divers caught here off Point Loma
and La Jolla these are harvested by
divers that are registered with the Fish
and Game it's a limited entry fishery. We also have a size limit, so the divers can
only pick the sea urchins that are three
and a quarter inch and larger. The size
limit is something the industry had
advocated about twenty years ago so we'd
have a sustainable resource.
So as you
can see, these sea urchins now are
getting ready to be cracked open we have
a special tool that we use to open the
sea urchins; kind of reverse pliers
where you squeeze it instead of
tightening down, it opens things up.
Look
on the inside of the sea urchin then you
see the roe and the stomach really
that's all they have they've got they
got a stomach, they eat seaweed mostly,
they've got the reproductive organs and
they've got spines to protect them.
Pretty basic animal.
At the time 20 years ago. these these were considered pests
because there were so many of them out there
where they were knocking down the kelp
beds. But an industry started when they
found out that it's a Japanese delicacy
at the sushi bars...we've developed into
quite a industry right now.
And so after the sea urchins are split open, the
ladies will spoon out the roe and the
stomach.
Over here we have the cleaning operation
where we separate the stomach membrane
from the roe; it's kind of time
consuming, you have to be very careful cause the
roe is very delicate at this point.
The uni is going in a brine solution
just to be thoroughly washed before it's
drained for packing. Here we have the
draining process where the sea urchins
we try to get the extra water out of the
baskets and we add paper towels to
absorb the extra water off the uni at
this point.
So next they go into the cooler now.
So here are the sea urchins...they've
got the paper towels and they are being drained...
Here we can see how the sea urchins
are packed
into the wooden trays for the sushi bars. The
ladies are very skillful in the way
they're able to separate the qualities
the colors and the sizes and
artistically pack them when the wooden
trays so when it gets to the sushi bar
everybody will be very impressed by the way the
things are packed.
Here we have the finished product ready for the sushi bars
these are all packed in a wooden
trays ready to be delivered to your
local sushi bar. We also do some plastic
trays which go to supermarkets. Time for sushi now!!
