{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Urchin predators converge on Mendocino beach","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":388,"description":"June 20, 2022 — The first annual urchinfest took place this weekend, with opportunities to learn about urchins and their environment, and to eat them raw on the beach at Van Damme State Park in Little River.\r\nA woman named Juanita described the flavor as “someone sweet and buttery. It just slides down really easily. Maybe it’s a softer texture than raw fish, but I love it.” She had just sampled some of the red urchin uni harvested by Greg Fonts, a freediver and spear fisherman who was wearing a shirt that said “Meateater” as he cracked into the spiny creatures.\r\nAbout 120 people showed up on Saturday morning to watch the demonstration, hear about the urchin, and have a chance at a taste.\r\nNot that there’s much to eat out of the spiny purple shell. A mysterious illness has killed off most of the sunflower sea stars, which were the urchins’ main predator. The purple urchin have overpopulated and devoured the kelp, and now they hang out in a dormant malnourished state. Unlike the red urchin, the purple urchin have no marketable value.\r\n\r\nJoshua Russo is president of the Watermen’s Alliance, a recreational divers association that’s part of an effort to remove the urchins from some small areas. The idea is to create a few refugia for kelp so it can re-seed itself if ocean conditions start to balance out again. In 2019, the recreational limit for purple urchin was doubled from the previous year’s limit, to forty gallons per diver in Mendocino, Sonoma, and Humboldt counties. And in Caspar Cove, there is no recreational limit and divers are allowed to crush the urchins in the water.\r\n“What we’re doing is under a scientific collection permit,” Russo explained. “Part of the project is to see if divers will voluntarily report their activity. Reef Check (a non-profit that trains citizen scientists to collect data on California’s kelp forest ecosystems) has a website set up where divers can report their activity. It basically asks how many you think you culled in a dive,...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}