Environment & Natural Resources
UrchinFest returns to Mendocino coast with celebration of uni, ecosystem education
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Events the weekend of June 16 include tide pooling, sake tasting, and the chance to try your hand at diving for urchin.
The Mendocino Voice | Mendocino County, CA (https://mendovoice.com/tag/purple-urchin/)
Events the weekend of June 16 include tide pooling, sake tasting, and the chance to try your hand at diving for urchin.
Divers taking a hammer to purple urchin is just one piece of the goal to bring back the bull kelp: “We’re still struggling to acquire multi-year funding for restoration work at large.”
The pycnopodia sighting brought “a bit of hope to a gloomy situation,” as diver Grant Downie said he’s been discouraged by low kelp numbers and not many viable red urchins.
Despite a long road ahead and a purple seafloor, nearly two years of hard work and grant money have shown that clearing purple urchin by hand could help bring back Northern California’s bull kelp forests.
“We need to learn to eat what’s bountiful and available, and not always just want that same piece of salmon,” said MendoParks board member Cally Dym after UniFest, a marriage of culinary arts and sustainability education.