Sea urchin study ( cull )

[JonD]

My daughter has just been doing some film work for fisheries on an urchin cull. These are done to study how quickly the urchins return and the changes to marine growth in these areas after urchins are removed. This is also done in Victoria and Tasmania where urchins are destroying kelp forrests and othe vital sea grasses etc.

This is a short clip from the full project, hopefully she can get more involved in this kind of work. All her filming was on breath hold.

 

[podtrailler]

Pity all urchin are killed.

Someone should harvest and sell the urchin eggs to korea and Japan. There expensive and demand is alot in Asia.

[JonD]

2 minutes ago, podtrailler said:

Pity all urchin are killed.

Someone should harvest and sell the urchin eggs to korea and Japan. There expensive and demand is alot in Asia.

Some of these guys in this video are urchin fishermen, the comercial impact is nothing compared to the amount there are out there. Protecting urchin predators will have far better impact of the species than killing a few by us.

[fragmeister]

Nice bit of filming and production.

 

[JonD]

On 8/5/2018 at 2:51 PM, fragmeister said:

Nice bit of filming and production.

 

Not bad considering she did it all on breath holds.

[Hill373737]

Great piece of video and you have to love a bit of RL Burnside as the soundtrack!!

[Berleyguts]

Great piece of video!

What is the issue with sea urchins, exactly? Edit: Sorry, just reread post: damage to kelp beds.

A friend of mine collects urchin shells washed up around Port Stephens and has an impressive display of them. She loves them.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Berleyguts

[JonD]

5 hours ago, Berleyguts said:

Great piece of video!

What is the issue with sea urchins, exactly? Edit: Sorry, just reread post: damage to kelp beds.

A friend of mine collects urchin shells washed up around Port Stephens and has an impressive display of them. She loves them.

Not just that they eat kelp, they live to around 70 years old and produce billions of eggs. Their diet changes so they can live on pretty much anything right down to algae on the rocks. Also the distribution of our species is spreading south which has already caused huge damage to Tasmania's kelp forests and the species that rely on them.

A mjor problem is the lack of predators that feed on urchins and once an area turns baron there's no bouncing back naturally. 

[JonD]

Pretty interesting article https://oceana.org/blog/seaweed-could-be-scrubbing-way-more-carbon-atmosphere-we-expected

[nutsaboutfishing]

20 hours ago, JonD said:

Not just that they eat kelp, they live to around 70 years old and produce billions of eggs. Their diet changes so they can live on pretty much anything right down to algae on the rocks. Also the distribution of our species is spreading south which has already caused huge damage to Tasmania's kelp forests and the species that rely on them.

A mjor problem is the lack of predators that feed on urchins and once an area turns baron there's no bouncing back naturally. 

Jon is there a lack of predators because the urchins have been introduced (like the cane toad) or have people just wiped them out?  Pardon my ignorance.

Richard

[JonD]

2 hours ago, nutsaboutfishing said:

Jon is there a lack of predators because the urchins have been introduced (like the cane toad) or have people just wiped them out?  Pardon my ignorance.

Richard

Large blue groupers, big snapper and big lobsters are some of the key predators. We see big healthy groupers on most remaining kelp beds, finding any snapper over 2kg in my area is getting very rare. Lobster numbers seem really good locally but most are relatively small, size counts in tackling urchins.