Narrator: About 20,000 pounds of sea urchins
are delivered to this Santa Barbara factory each week.
But it's not until you crack open the spiky shells
that you see what makes sea urchins so valuable:
the gonads.
Just one 200-gram tray of urchin gonads like this
can cost $100.
And some in Japan can sell for over five times that.
Sea urchins are one of the few seafoods
still hand-harvested by divers today.
And in recent years,
masses of them have taken over the seabeds of California.
So why are there so many urchins?
And how, despite this seemingly huge supply,
are they still so expensive?
Sea urchin, or uni, is a prized delicacy
in several parts of the world.
Today, the yellow-orange gonads
are often served in sushi
and even right out of the shell.
Hundreds of urchin species exist,
but only a select few are coveted food,
including the red sea urchin here in Santa Barbara.
Known as "California gold," these gonads are prized
because they're large, buttery,
and sweet from the kelp they eat.
To find gonads like this, divers need to collect
individual sea urchins by hand.
Michael Robertson has been diving for urchins for 15 years.
He starts his days early,
sailing out before the sun rises.
It takes him and his crew about two and a half hours
to reach a good diving spot.
Michael: See that little island up there?
That's called Bee Rock.
That's where we're going.
So, all this green right here
on top of this red, that's reef,
is vegetation.
That's a good thing.
That lets us know it's not sand
and it's just not bare rock.
If there's vegetation, maybe there's urchins.
Narrator: Michael looks for abundant kelp forests
to help him decide where to dive.
More kelp typically means better-quality urchins.
Gene Demachi: 2010, on a good day,
a diver could harvest maybe up to 2,000 pounds a day
of good-quality sea urchins.
Now the divers are typically coming in
with about 300 to 500 pounds a day.
So a quarter of the amount.
Narrator: But surprisingly,
parts of California's seabeds are full of urchins.
Gene: If they wanted to, they could still bring in
2,000 pounds a day. There's a lot of sea urchins out there,
but there's a lack of kelp.
So even if you bring in 2,000 pounds,
if they're not marketable, then we don't harvest them.
Michael: If you want to compare how it was to how it is,
this was solid kelp,
from here, all the way in, all the way down.
And now you have just little pockets here and there.
Narrator: That lack of kelp
impacts the value of red sea urchins.
It also strains the ocean's ecosystem
and the species that rely on kelp forests for habitat.
Along with warming waters and pollution in recent decades,
a certain sea urchin is to blame.
Sea urchins can survive for years without eating,
even without gonads.
And after the decline of sea stars, one of its predators,
in 2013, the purple sea urchin population exploded,
consuming more than 95%
of California's kelp forests as it grew.
Purple urchins are smaller and produce fewer gonads,
so there's little commercial demand for them.
And as purple urchins multiply and eat more kelp,
red urchins with good gonads
become harder for divers to find.
Finding the right spot to dive is just the first challenge.
Getting your hands on these spiky creatures is the main one.
Michael: Some people wonder if sea-urchin diving
is a dangerous occupation.
It can be as dangerous as you allow it.
If you don't keep really tight tabs on your gear
and the mechanics of your boat, it could easily kill you.
Narrator: To make the job easier,
Michael and his partner, Fred, need specific tools.
Michael: So, this is the one essential piece of equipment
everybody has to have. It's called a rake.
It's custom-made. Everybody has their own take
on how they like to have it done.
I've got all these fancy colors on mine,
because if I ever drop it,
I'll be able to see it on the bottom.
And my daughter loves putting the tape on.
Narrator: Once they're suited up,
Michael and Fred head to the bottom
and begin collecting urchins one by one.
Michael: All right.
Narrator: Even with the proper gear,
a good dive is never a guarantee.
Typically, there are only about five gonads
inside each urchin.
And without enough kelp for the urchins to feed on,
the gonads start to shrivel up.
In some cases, an urchin will be totally empty inside.
Michael: We do crack urchins on the bottom
so that we can see what we're picking,
if there's enough product inside,
and what the color is like inside.
Narrator: To make things more challenging,
Michael can only harvest urchins
at least 3 1/4 inches in size.
Michael: You can't just go out and pick empty urchins.
So there's a lot more empty urchins
than there is beautiful packed urchins
that you'd want to sell.
Depending on what they're eating
depends on the grade of the urchin.
We got lucky on that one.
Radio: Oh, right on. Sounds good.
OK, cool, man. See you on the other side there.
Roger that.
Narrator: After a 12-hour day to the islands and back,
Michael returns with 750 to 900 pounds of urchins.
The shelf life of fresh urchins is short,
so they need to be delivered to processors that same night.
By 4 a.m., Gene Demachi's team is already
cracking and cleaning each one by hand.
Gene: And today we probably have about
10,000 sea urchins to go through.
Narrator: The gonads are extremely fragile,
and they only stay fresh for about a week.
Workers crack each urchin down the middle
to avoid breaking any of the gonads inside.
Then it's time for one of the most crucial parts
of this process, cleaning the gonads.
This stage requires sharp attention to detail.
If workers don't totally remove the intestines
inside the urchin, the gonads degrade faster.
And if any of the gonads rip during this process,
they immediately drop in value.
Gene: If the gonad breaks, then it drops a grade or two.
And when it goes from an A-plus-plus grade
and we have to drop it down to a B grade,
the value is maybe about a quarter
of what it could have been.
Narrator: Workers then sort the gonads by color,
making sure each tray has a uniform shade
of yellow or orange.
After they've packed each wooden tray,
they use tweezers to inspect each gonad again
and gently remove any remaining kelp, shells, or spines.
The most valuable gonads make up the A-plus-plus grade.
Gene sells a 200-gram premium tray like this for $100.
These uni are bright yellow or orange
and come only from the sweeter male urchins.
They're primarily sent to restaurants,
but Gene doesn't come by this quality of gonad often.
He typically only finds one premium gonad
out of every 100 urchins.
Sea-urchin gonads weren't always
valuable food in the US, particularly in the '70s,
just before Gene's father opened Tradewind.
Gene: The government used to ask the divers,
the local divers, to smash them, kill them at the time.
Until a Japanese person came along and said,
"No, this is actually a delicacy in Japan."
And after many trials and errors,
we also found out that Santa Barbara sea urchin
is actually really, really good,
like one of the best in the world.
Narrator: Santa Barbara urchin
was traditionally shipped to Japan,
until economic collapse stalled things in the mid-'90s.
Fortunately for Gene's family and other US producers,
a sushi boom took off in the US around the same time.
Gene: Those of us that was able to make the transition
from the Japanese market into the US domestic market
survived at the time.
Narrator: Today, Gene ships has product across the US.
Gene: Uni is one of the few seafood out there
that they really haven't perfected farming yet.
Until somebody figures that out,
uni is probably going to be a limited
highly sought-after item.
Narrator: This ultimately raises the price
of rare premium gonads.
Gene: This year, we're actually seeing a good-quality,
high-quality uni that we haven't seen in about a decade.
We're seeing a lot more colder waters.
We're starting to see kelp grow back
where it hasn't grown back in the last 10 years.
Narrator: After a difficult decade,
things might be looking up for red sea urchins
and the kelp they depend on.