Highliner Studios Ocean Film "HARVESTER - The California Urchin Diver Experience"

[SocalDinar]

Great memories.

First Job out of High school in 82.  Could not beat the money. 50 cents a lb back then and could easily do 2000lbs a day at San Nicolas.

I got a heck of alot of stories diving Urchin on a 32 ft radon.  The Lil Jack out of Redondo Beach.

Crazy days! The Boat went down in a storm December 83 two months after i left the crew.

Two on board did not make it back.

 

 

[RodandStaff]

Pardon me Social...but I'm kind of a land lubbe myself....the only water I usually fish on is frozen and that only when I go back up North for a visit to the frozen tundra! It's always Amazed me that for generations some folks have given up solid ground and risk everything for livelihood or adventure on the high seas! Sorry for the loss of your crew mates!!!

[SocalDinar]

Hey Rodnstaff

Life's an adventure and just like a snowflake no 2 are the same

A good friend of my mine ( Brent ) bought the lil jack just out of high school

He was no diver but his parents were loaded. My dad had me diving when I was 12

He was an old school navy diver. So I got an offer out of high school and took it

It was ten hours of hooka diving every day (hose and compressor ) in the best diving areas in the world

SoCal diving is under rated. In fact I have dove throughout the world for sport and nothing compares to our kelp forests . Nothing! I found the Great Barrier Reef to be boring LOL

4 of us and a dog ( sea dog ) would make the 90 mile trip to San Nicolas . Big seas or not if they needed money the boat was leaving .

We would dive for a day then head to Santa barbara island with our load of urchins

We would meet a giant old ship the Kathryn M and unload and trade supplies. The food always had diesel fuel on it.

Then we would head back to Nic . Plenty of scary times

12 ft seas in a 32 ft boat loaded down with urchins is scary!!

We would make the passage sleeping in our wetsuits

Being the youngest I i had the worst job of climbing over the urchins in the middle of the night while underway to open a valve on the bilge pump at the stern. Imagine that in 12 ft seas!! That's 24 ft from top to bottom. The boat would actually be surfing.

Many times we had the coast guard help us

Bernie got the bends once, another time the Kathryn M

Gave us fuel with bugs in it. Stranding us at 80 miles out

Crazy days and memories

I knew it was as them when during a huge storm right before Christmas I heard on the radio that a urchin boat had sunk.

No one else would be stupid enough to be out in that weather .

A wave had hit them broadside with the cages full of urchins

Tipped the load and the boat capsized within two minutes

Bernie had his fiancé on board with no wetsuit and she died of hypothermic. He ended up letting her drop after two hours in the 50 degree water.They never found Kevin and he might have went down with the boat

Eddie took off on his surfboard for help. He was the last found by the coast guard 20 miles from where the rest were rescued

Edited November 21, 2014 by SocalDinar

[RodandStaff]

Wow...what a story...and your right, we are all wired differently. I would rather face a grizzly than the high seas with twelve foot waves!!! ) the closest I have ever heard of that around the Midwest has been made popular by the Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald"...Lake Superior tore that ship in half...and I think most of the crew still lay in their watery grave. It would probably shock us all if we really knew how many have been taken by the raging waves of Mother Nature!!!

[PD41]

Lack of Otters, Big Lobsters, Abalone to eat urchins results in a depleted kelp forest's. The urchins eat the root that is attached to a rock then the whole plant dies.

Thanks for the post SoCal.

PD41