Quote:
| Originally Posted by sidthejedi Seen plenty of people smashing open sea urchins to feed the wrasse, and whilst it is cool to see it once it gets a bit boring. Also if I'm on a rummage dive half the fun is trying to find all the fish and other cool stuff. It doesn't seem quite right when you have a wrasse following you like an eager puppy, waiting hopefully for you to feed it. |
This is fairly regular here in Tasmania. In recent years, we've had a big increase in black sea urchins, a beastie normally found much further to our north but they've spread south since the 80s along the East Coast; possibly global warming rlated possibly as a result of overfishing for crayfish etc.. They do enormous damage here, eating out all the kelp and forming sea urchin "barrens", which are pretty lifeless.
Class Echinoidea
Where we see them on a dive, we usually spend a few minutes with the big F/O knife going the smash, slash, bash and stab. Thus inevitably results in a bit of a feeding frenzy. When I lived on the NE coast, I was involved in a State-Govt funded Coastcare project where they paid for our air etc, so we could go out on a Sunday morning with a big spike and do this in areas where they were experimenting with the regeneration of Giant Kelp. The fish soon got to know to follow us around after this.
RichardM.