burnt embers

There is fishing, and there is fishing. Yesterday’s post was about fishing with a jig in deep water. Today’s is about fishing with a shovel by scooping Guudiingaay off the bottom just beyond boot height at lowest tide levels. Guudiingaay is the Haida word for sea urchin, and that is the term used on the project this year. For Goox and Dale especially these were a nice light morning snack, freshly caught and opened by Goox; shared with all that were willing. Some were eaten by the shore, others stored in a bucket by the screens, for higher tidal levels.

If you are going to try this, handle with great care. The barbs on sea urchin spines are perfectly designed to drive them ever deeper into your flesh, if one breaks off in your skin, which they are inclined to do. They fester and often require the application of a knife to remove them. We just kept our screening gloves on for the handling parts.

The gathering grounds

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From Goox we learned that her elders teach the proper way to eat Guudiingaay is to slurp them into the mouth. Dale and I and others tried it his way, but of course for the camera it is sometimes better to just drop it in. Take Goox’s advice – it tastes different when slurped.

Goox demonstrating how to slurp Guudiingaay

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I seriously doubt you will ever see another archaeological screening shot with a half dozen cold ones waiting in a bucket to be cracked open – cold Guudiingaay that is.

Snack all ready for a break at the screens

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The edible part is not really roe, it’s the gonads which produce the milt or roe. I tried to put that factoid out of mind as I slurped them up.

Dale, not slurping

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Urchins are a very serious problem in Haida Gwaii and other parts of this coast too. In quantity they are an indicator of ecological imbalance triggered by the extirpation of sea otters, which feed heavily on them and used to keep their numbers in check. The urchins feed on algae and create havoc with kelp beds which are like forests in the ocean, supporting huge numbers of organisms and animals that feed on them. Large kelp beds also serve to dampen wave action and reduce coastal erosion  – they also result in different beach sediment types in their lee than when the kelp is gone. Without sea otters there are many places that are termed “kelp barrens” where the sea floor is covered with Guudiingaay, so close together they are nearly touching, and no kelp. Since urchins are an important fishery (for the Asian market almost exclusively – termed Uni in Japanese they are very highly valued) there are commercial pressures against the reintroduction of sea otter. Probably pointless since as their numbers grow on the Alaska panhandle and north west Vancouver Island they are very likely to move over to Haida Gwaii without human assistance.

To open the gallery below click on any image, use the arrows to navigate between images and escape to return to this page.

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This link catalogues my posts about Kilgii Gwaay.

I was accompanied on this trip by one of the Quimper Hittys, Tansy, who has been blogging about the trip from a doll’s view and you can find those posts here. Pertinent to this post, she has already blogged about her experiences of Guudiingaay here.

Canon 5Dii, Canon 50mm/f1.4 lens, Nikkor-N (pre ai) 24mm/f2.8 lens, SMC Takumar 100mm/f4 macro lens. The EXIF data in the gallery is not accurate as the f-stop cannot be registered for the adapted old 24mm and 100mm lenses.

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