Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/121906
✺✺✺ UNI, PART DEUX As the rising appeal of sushi depletes global fish stocks, New England's dangerous sea urchin industry gets its spine back. S BY R.S. COOK PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSHUA SIMPSON ome 300 miles north of Boston, the Machias Motor Inn has never been so busy. It's December of 2012, and the parking lot is lined with pickup trucks, trailers, and boats, while their owners check and recheck their gear. They're gathered at this rural outpost in Downeast Maine in pursuit of a highly profitable, highly dangerous, highly curious catch: sea urchins. The Japanese delicacy urchin roe, commonly known as uni, has become the new caviar for many foodies, appearing on the menus of Boston's top sashimi eateries, such as O Ya, Oishii, and, of course, the dish's Back Bay namesake, Uni Sashimi Bar. Although these restaurants and others see only a tiny fraction compared to the bounty sent overseas to Tokyo, if you're eating uni in Boston, it most likely came from Maine's Bold Coast. And while the urchin itself offers little more than a bite, the story behind that bite is a mouthful. "Quite honestly, I could make $10,000 to $12,000 easy tomorrow," urchin diver Joe Leask tells me in one of the motel rooms off Route 1. "That is, if the market is good, and if the urchins are as thick as they say they are, and if I'm on my A game." Leask runs a nubby finger across a chart of nearby Cobscook 104 Maine's Whiting Bay reopened in December to sea urchin fishing. Bay, on the edge of the Canadian border. Two arms of Cobscook—Whiting and Denny's Bays—have been closed to urchin fishing for three years now, and they open tomorrow. Opportunities like this don't happen often, and urchin fishermen from Portland to Lubec are here to get in on the action. "From first light, you're going to see boats launching nonstop—it's going to be a race," Leask says. "I've done this racket long enough, I know where the urchins are going to be the best. I'm going to go right there and get in the water and stay in straight through till dark." He looks up from the chart. BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 104-109_BC_F_Uni_LateSpring13.indd 104 4/10/13 11:42 AM