Organizers ‘delighted’ following Mendocino’s purple urchin festival, the first of its kind in the U.S.

LITTLE RIVER, 6/27/22 – The parking lot at Van Damme State Beach on the morning of Saturday, June 18 was a maze of cars, with more rolling in all the time. An estimated 120 people gathered on the sand, and not just because it was a beautiful summer day. They were there to see a live demonstration of uni harvesting from urchin freshly caught that morning; to learn about overpopulation of purple urchin as kelp and abalone populations suffer along the coast; and to enjoy just one of the events that underpinned the first UniFest, a new annual festival driven by sustainability. 

“We developed this idea during COVID, so it was important to us that we created events that we would not have to cancel,” said Cally Dym, a MendoParks board member, the owner of the Little River Inn, and UniFest’s primary organizer.