Catch of the Day
By MICHIKO TAMURA
Rafu Staff Writer
Saturday, June 10, 2006

California sea urchins make a splash in the U.S. market.

Photos by AUDREY SHIOMI/Rafu Shimpo
Randy Farrell, an Oxnard-based sea urchin diver, holds up a sea urchin he and his crew
caught earlier in the day. Oxnard is home to the second largest sea urchin landing in
California.

Imagine eating a few pieces of perfectly shaped, golden-colored sea urchin over a bowl of steamed rice with a few drops of soy sauce. It’s the kind of thing that melts on your tongue and serves as a moment of supreme bliss for those with a weakness for the underwater delicacy. In Japan, sea urchin, or uni, has been established as one of the most popular sushi bar selections for years. Thanks to the recent sushi boom, particularly among young people, uni’s popularity has been increasing rapidly here in America, as well. But, uni wasn’t always so welcomed among American people.

Mack M. Demachi, CEO of Tradewind Seafood Inc., poses for a photo at his sea urchin processing factory located in Oxnard.

“Before the 1970’s, uni wasn’t recognized as food here,” said Mack M. Demachi, CEO of Tradewind Seafood Inc., a sea urchin processing company located in Oxnard. “Rather, it was killed by divers because sea urchins ate away kelp living on the ocean floor.” 

Demachi said that the sea urchin industry began during the 1970’s when a Japanese businessman realized a possible business opportunity using the spiny kelp eaters. 

“Back then, nobody knew anything about the uni business ... from where to find the sea urchin, how to process them. It was literally a continuous process of trial and error,” said Demachi who came to the United States in 1974 to work at one of the sea urchin processing plants in Ventura.

Their problem wasn’t only a lack of knowledge, but also the size of the sea urchin. It was simply too big.

“When we started exporting them to Japan, the Japanese market didn’t react so favorably to jumbo-sized uni, which were 3 to 4 pounds each,” he said, adding that Japanese uni was normally less than 1 pound. 

California’s sea urchin was sold at about 5 to 6 cents each, which was less than one-tenth of the market price in Japan. Most  California sea urchin companies were constantly in the red, he said.

After a decade of struggle, the tide of the industry began turning in their favor when the yen became strong with the arrival of Japan’s “bubble economy” in the 1980s. A number of Japanese sea urchin processing companies made inroads into the American market, and in 1989 majority of the 50 million pounds of the California sea urchins were exported to Japan. Demachi established his own company in Oxnard around the same time.

“During the ‘80s, we became concerned that sea urchins in California would become exhausted if we kept harvesting at such a fast pace,” he said, adding that during that time, the government started imposing legal controls on sea urchin fishing. The regulation only allows divers to fish for two to four days weekly during May through October.

The industry’s golden era, however, didn’t last forever. With the collapse of the “bubble economy,” demands for the sea urchin from Japan declined dramatically. Most Japanese sea urchin processors withdrew from the United States, and a couple of American based companies were forced to find a new sea urchin market. 

“So, we started targeting the American market. Fortunately, with help from the sushi boom, the demand for sea urchin increased in the 1990s in the United States,” Demachi said. “Now, about 70 percent of them are distributed within the country, including to many Italian or French restaurants, too.”

In 2004, about 12 million pounds of sea urchins were unloaded in Southern California and 2 million pounds in Northern California, he said. Sea urchin-rich areas in Southern California include Santa Barbara, Oxnard, Long Beach and San Diego.

“Southern California’s ocean is rich in giant kelp, which is the best food for sea urchin,” Demachi said. “Sea urchins who eat the best food are usually the best food for us.”

The type of uni most of us know here in Southern California is called “red sea urchin,” which tastes lighter and has less of a scent than Japan’s bafun uni (literally “horse turd” sea urchin). For many Americans who can’t stand the strong-fish smell, this one is probably more suitable to eat.

“Oxnard uni tastes a bit more sweeter than the Japanese one,” said Yukihito Hanada, an owner of Oxnard’s Sushi Hanada, which is located about five minutes from Demachi’s uni factory. “I have to go to Los Angeles to buy most of the fish I use. But, for uni, local ones are the best.”

It usually takes less than two days for Hanada to receive his sea urchins after divers bring them ashore. Divers deliver the urchins to Demachi’s factory by evening and he starts processing them from 4 to 5 in the morning the next day. Packed urchins are stored in refrigerators overnight, and the next morning they’re delivered to Hanada’s sushi restaurant. Demachi said if the urchins are preserved under 41°F, they will remain fresh for 10 days.

So, when is the best season to eat uni?

Although sea urchin fishing continues year-round, they grow fat just before the urchin’s spawning season (December to March), which gives them the best quality, Demachi said.

“The winter time is always the best time,” said Randy Farrell, Oxnard’s sea urchin diver of 21 years. “When the water gets too warm, kelp dies off and that’s what [sea urchin] eat. When they don’t get food, you don’t get quality roe.”

Where do you find the best sea urchin? It all depends on divers’ intuition based on their experience, Farrell said.

“[The sea urchins] come in like ants,” he said. “They are in big groups. You only take the leading urchins that are getting the best food. And that gives the other ones more room to move and grow themselves so you can always come back. It’s a renewable fishery.”

Sea urchin fishing used to be done in a few places such as Japan, Mexico and California. But, as the popularity for sea urchin increases worldwide, the sea urchin business continues to spread to other countries including Chile, China and Russia, Demachi said.

With uni’s globalization, we now can eat uni at a more reasonable price than before. Sea urchin can be used not only for sushi, but also be used for various purposes such as for steaming, roasting or boiling. 

“With the growing healthy sushi boom, I think the demands for uni will increase more. In the meantime, I’d like to do my best for California sea urchins to gain a good reputation as the best quality uni,” Demachi said.