Uni Foraging

11.26.2023

Hello, how was your weekend?

We went uni foraging on Saturday! There was a local spot that my friend invited us to go to that is very suitable for this activity

To be honest, I was little scared of it at first because it seems very painful for the uni, but this variant (the purple uni) that you can forage for is actually invasive and extremely detrimental to the environment in this area. I had no idea, but apparently purple sea urchins devoured over 90-95% of the kelp forests near California since their populations exploded so quickly!

Note, if you’re interested in this, you’ll need to get a fishing license and make sure the area you’re foraging in isn’t protected for the sea life.

It was really a beautiful day out I don’t think it’s in my photo, but this area is the coast across from Catalina Island, so you can see it in the distance when you’re there.

We started from Christmas Tree Cove and made our way down the steep rocky cliff to the tidepool area to start seeing where we can forage The tide was going down for about an hour after we arrived but quickly came back higher than expected so our friends got quite splashed!

I stayed back a bit, because I’m a little scared of sea kelp, and also getting wet

It was so kelpy! We saw lots of little hermit crabs as well as a mystery “starfish” with extremely lanky legs (maybe a 5-legged octopus somehow…?) One of our friends said she usually sees sea slugs, but she didn’t see any this time.

One of the finds was this red uni that is normally only found while diving! It looks so spikey, doesn’t it? The purple uni was spikier earlier but he seemed to deflate a bit after being left out for photos…

Overall, it was really fun and very “new” to me kind of activity. We spent some time cleaning the uni which was relaxing under the sun. We chatted with another group too who were just out observing sea life. It was nice!

I’m really happy my friends invited me to this even if it’s quite different from what I’m usually doing, since they remembered both my guy and I wanted to try it