![\"A.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764167708_937_default.jpg\")
Ethan Blake is a 23-year-old urchin diver and fish harvester based in Gander Bay. (Troy Turner\/CBC)<\/p>\nWhen he was in high school, Ethan Blake drove from Gander Bay to Stoneville to earn some extra cash.<\/p>\n
He mostly cleaned and did odd jobs at the urchin fish plant owned by Hodder\u2019s Shellfish. In addition to his earnings, it also got Blake thinking about his career choices.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like being on the water every day, and I also like being in the water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Blake now owns his own fishing enterprise. It\u2019s a passion that keeps him at home in central Newfoundland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His idyllic future may be in jeopardy, however, if he is not permitted to fish in other bays\u00a0where the urchin stock remains untouched.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year is probably the worst year we’ve had since I started,” Blake said. \u201cWe’re not getting so good a roe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sea urchins are harvested when commercial divers team up with license holders to collect urchins from the ocean\u2019s floor. They are taken for their roe \u2014 or uni \u2014 and sold worldwide. It’s a delicacy in Japan, and in Canada it’s an industry worth about $6 million.<\/p>\n
Ethan Blake is a 23-year-old urchin diver and fish harvester based in Gander Bay. (Troy Turner\/CBC)<\/p>\n
The urchin fishery does not have maximum weight landings for harvesters, called total allowable catch. It\u2019s instead controlled by established seasons, number of licenses and restricting fishing areas.<\/p>\n
\u2018That confines us\u2019<\/p>\n
Urchin-fishing areas are aligned with lobster-fishing areas. Like lobster, licenses are valid only within the fishing area associated with the harvester\u2019s home port. <\/p>\n
Unlike lobster, however, there are only 52 commercial licenses issued throughout the province\u00a0 for urchins.<\/p>\n
Of those, only 13 have had urchin landings this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSeventy-five per cent of our shorelines, there’s not ever been [urchins] harvested,\u201d said Jerry Hodder, owner of Hodder\u2019s Shellfish.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat confines us to just fish in those areas, and not explore the rest of the island. And, you know, it’s very frustrating as a diver looking at where you can actually fish.\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH | \u2018I got a lot of urchins right now. In three weeks, I won’t\u2019:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764167708_121_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Ozzy eggs \u2014 better known as sea urchins \u2014 are facing an uncertain future in N.L.<\/p>\n
They are considered a delicacy by many, but the number of sea urchins is declining in Newfoundland and Labrador. Advocates say the federal fisheries department is ignoring the issue, and that the consequences will be far-reaching. The CBC\u2019s Troy Turner reports.<\/p>\n
Hodder\u2019s Shellfish wants Fisheries and Oceans Canada to consider offering exploratory, or temporary, licenses to the harvesters actually involved in the fishery to go into bays where the urchins sit untouched on the ocean\u2019s floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hodder says it\u2019s about gaining access to a better quality product, with a higher percentage of quality roe.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knows they got sea urchins, but we’re looking for a certain yield, and without the quality, these urchins have no value at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rather than see those higher-quality urchins left untouched and unharvested, he says offering exploratory licenses is the road to proper resource management.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fight Hodder\u2019s been having since before he became a plant owner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this was your big crab quotas and whatever, and crab plants, and\u00a0all these big unionized plants, this would not even get off the floor,\u201d he said. \u201cWe fish capelin, and if there’s overrun left from, say, Conception Bay\u2026 I got new conditions [from DFO] in 24 hours. This is 11 years [for\u00a0 urchins].\u201d<\/p>\n
DFO would not do an interview. In a prepared statement, the department said landings of\u00a0 urchins have been low for several years.<\/p>\n
It said in 2016, exploratory access was made available in areas with fewer than five commercial licenses. Only one applicant applied for an exploratory license.<\/p>\n
The department’s sea urchin advisory committee met to discuss management measures for the fishery in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter consultation, there was no broad or significant support for changes to current management measures, including with respect to fishing access,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
DFO would not clarify details on what support was needed to make changes, or who supported leaving the fishery status quo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The department did say it was open to considering changes to temporary licenses before the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
\u2018Making value out of something\u2019<\/p>\n
That\u2019s too late for Hodder\u2019s Shellfish, who recommended exploratory licensing at the committee level. <\/p>\n
Hodder\u2019s Shellfish has received letters of support from MP Clifford Small and MHA Jim McKenna, as well as a former sea urchin plant owner, plant workers and harvesters.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764167708_33_default.jpg\")
Jerry and Alisha Hodder own Hodder’s Shellfish, a sea urchin plant in Stoneville. (Troy Turner\/CBC)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I start doing codfish tomorrow, I’m taking from somebody else. Whereas the urchin, I\u2019m not taking from nobody \u2026 I\u2019m making value out of something that no one’s \u2014 no one’s \u2014 doing,\u201d said Hodder.<\/p>\n
Hodder’s wife, Alisha Hodder, is the plant manager. She said the value is also shown in employment at the plant.<\/p>\n
In good years, the plant \u2014\u00a0one of the only ones of its kind in the province \u2014\u00a0employs more than 30 people with full-time hours seasonally. Because of lower-quality yields this season, that number has dropped to about 25.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of people from Stoneville, people from Boyd’s Cove and Birchy Bay, Gander Bay,” Alisha Hodder said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know where else they would have went. They would have gone a lot farther [away from their homes], I would imagine, to get employment \u2026\u00a0 My heart breaks for them, because this is rural Newfoundland.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
She wants to see a future in the fishery for her three sons, and for the young people who want to stay at home. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf things don’t change, the urchin fishery will have nothing in store for anybody,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’ll just go. It just won’t be there. Things have to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Packages](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764167709_896_default.jpg\")
Sea urchins are packed and ready to be shipped to Japan. During peak season, Hodder’s Shellfish sends three loads of urchin roe to Japan every week. (Troy Turner\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Blake agrees. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s pretty important to me. Without that, I don’t have a life to live,\u201d he said. \u201cI got big payments I\u2019m making on an enterprise I just bought, and without urchins all winter, I can barely do it to make payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing 23 years old, and going to school, and putting a lot of time and effort into learning how to dive for sea urchins, it would be pretty devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Download our\u00a0free CBC News app<\/a>\u00a0to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our\u00a0daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click\u00a0here to visit our landing page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When he was in high school, Ethan Blake drove from Gander Bay to Stoneville to earn some extra…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-308278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}