We’ve had January cold weather for the past few days, which doesn’t make it easy for those who harvest scallops or green sea urchins. Here we see some of these stalwarts out in Naskeag Harbor on Tuesday (January 28), dragging for the seaweed-eating urchins.
The orange reproductive innards of urchins (gonads called “uni”) are delicacies in Japan and other parts of Asia, to which Maine processors air-freight the fresh creatures whole or their processed uni.
The commercial urchin-dragging season here ends in late February or mid-March, depending on zone. Harvesting urchins here also is done by raking, trapping, and diving. The urchin-dragging regulations require, among other things, that the drag net be no more than five and one-half feet wide and that the urchins taken be no larger than three inches and no smaller than two and one-sixteenth inches. Here we see a crew member measuring urchins to see if they’re legal:
(Brooklin, Maine)