found it’s more effective to focus on relatively healthy kelp forests, at the edge of urchin barrens, and reduce numbers there. “We can try to hold the line,” says Huang. By harvesting urchins in this liminal space between barrens and forests, OoNee becomes part of an ecosystem of efforts to solve a very complicated and urgent problem. “We’re not kidding ourselves in thinking we can recover kelp along the entire coastline,” says Gravem. “But if we can target certain places to bring the urchins down, seed some kelp, and release some sea stars, we can use this three-pronged approach and that spot will have healthy kelp forests that can hopefully reseed nearby places.” Bailey chose Cape Arago—situated on the South Coast near Coos Bay — as their harvesting site, “because it’s the most consistent kelp bed in the state.” Bailey says here he can find some purple urchins that are sellable in the fall and winter, straight from the water. Selling these wild-harvested urchins to start has allowed Bailey and Huang to get a feel for the market and give buyers a taste of what’s out here. But to harvest numbers that will have a greater impact, they’ll need to harvest the smaller urchins, too, then fatten them up at the ranch. In the summer of 2024, Huang and Bailey experimented with different types of seaweed diets for the urchins. The Nature Conservancy has been working on several types of seaweed pellets for urchin farming and provided them for testing at OoNee; the goal is to make the urchins taste like they’ve been eating their natural diet of kelp, but using seaweeds that are thriving. The urchins have also been munching on fresh dulse. This is an incredibly versatile and sustainable crop—one that’s farmed on land at Oregon Seaweed—and urchin farming could be a new market for expanding its reach. This connection to another sustainable crop highlights something that’s particularly exciting to Huang, Bailey and anyone who wants to see the restoration of coastal ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. By doing its small part to restore kelp forests, OoNee is poised to become part of a web of businesses and work that intentionally connects people to the ocean in ways that are good for everyone. There are many obstacles on the road to making OoNee a sustainable, thriving business. Oregon’s waters are infamously rough, and divers have a limited window in which they’re navigable. Oregon also tends to see less funding for ocean farming projects than more commercially thriving coastlines like California and Washington. When we met this summer, Huang said he was curious about how the upcoming election would impact funding for regenerative agriculture projects like this one moving forward, a question that remained unanswered as this issue went into production in mid-November. But Huang and Bailey seem optimistic about pushing forward. Not only are they excited about their own project, but they want to see how other people can establish similar systems for harvesting purple sea urchins, and applying this type of work to other struggling ecosystems where certain species are causing imbalance. More broadly, Huang would like to see more people try to align their own work with natural systems that need support, like this one. “There’s something inherently dangerous in being disconnected from nature,” he says. Huang says it feels good to be working on something so connected to nature and to a food he loves. “If everyone tried to find something that’s a little more aligned with themselves, maybe our entire society would just shift a little bit.” PHOTOS BY JASON E. KAPLAN Uni must be eaten fresh. Left: These sea urchins are fed seaweed pellets. Right: Bailey holds dulse, which is used for water filtration at OoNee and also serves as a food source. 29
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