Volume, Price and Quality
Mark Urchin Market

Seen here at the town landing in Lubec are, from left, urchin buyer, fisherman Roger Wright, urchin buyer and Russell Wright with the Maine Marine Patrol. Chessie Crowe Gartmayer photo.

“It is routine for there to be a Maine Marine Patrol officer present when harvesters and buyers meet to transact an urchin sale,” said Maine Marine Patrol (MMP) officer Russell Wright. “Buyers, typically driving refrigerated box trucks, position themselves at the wharf. Fishermen bring their totes of urchins to the buyers, who inspect them and make bids on them.”

Japan is the big market for urchin roe and Christmas time is the traditional holiday season for urchin consumers. Most of the buyers buy for large Asian exporters.

The MMP is there to check the licenses of both the fishermen and the buyers.

“There are only a few buyers who come this far (To Lubec) now,” said Roger Wright, who is the sternman on Milton Chutes’ fishing vessel The Captain’s Lady.

Wright has a lot of experience dealing with buyers.

“The harvest quantity is down this year,” he said. “It has been for a few years. The roe is not as good as years ago either. They’ve been dragging over the same bottom for years and it shows in the quality. Back when I started, maybe 25 years ago, we brought in so many urchins in a tow the table was full and we had to dump them on deck. Then we shoveled them onto totes. We would bring those in and go out for more the same day.”

The price was only 25 cents per lb. then, but the volume was high. The roe quality was good. The buyers, numbering just eight or nine, would get into bidding wars over totes of urchins. In the last few years, prices at times reached $6.50 per lb. if the roe quality was good.

“With the seven-tote limit, that price works,” Wright said. “But unlike with scallops, where a scallop is a scallop, an urchin is not always an urchin. There can be no roe or very low-quality roe in them. So a tote of those brings a low or no price from buyers.”

Buyers crack a few open to inspect the roe and make an offer. In Lubec, lately, the offers have been, $2 to $3 per lb. Recently, for the first time, a buyer said he was not sure he would be coming back to Lubec because of the quality.