Canadians Skewered by Russian Sea Urchin
The worst of all sushi is “uni” raw sea urchin. But Japanese love it and several countries have developed an industry selling the Japanese this pest at high prices…until now.
Actually, uni looks worse than it tastes. In clean water at a remote beach, I’ll eat uni off the end of my diving knife raw with only sea water as flavoring. However, after a few days on ice in the bildge of a fishing trawler, uni tastes nasty as far as I’m concerned.
Russian competition flattens sea urchin demand
Sea urchin processors say their market has overwhelmed by Russian competition…. Russian producers can ship their sea urchin roe— a delicacy in the Japanese market — for a fraction of the costs that companies in Newfoundland and Labrador incur….the sea urchin industry, which was launched in 1992…the same year that the northern cod moratorium was imposed ….we saw four or five fairly good years, and now the last two or three have really been in a tailspin,” ….Sea urchin harvesting is an expensive and labour-intensive business, requiring divers and expert handling to insure that roe are shipped fresh to Japan…
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