Urchin Nursery Trials 1

For this project we teamed up with Prof Larry Harris at the University of New Hampshire, Chris Hill (who runs an urchin hatchery at Portsmouth Scuba, NH) and Jim Wadsworth of Friendship International to test a method of growing juvenile sea urchins through the nursery phase before outplanting to lease sites. We used suspended plastic mesh envelopes which were filled with shell hash substrate conditioned with biofilm prior to stocking. We hung these envelopes in a 300,000 gallon mesocosm at CCAR.

urchin nursery
In this photo Chris Hill (left), Larry Harris (at rear), Steve Eddy (front) and Jim Wadsworth are stocking the tiny (pinhead) sea urchins into the plastic mesh envelopes ready to place in the large tank behind.