R&D

OoNee conditions purple sea urchins collected from Oregon's urchin barrens to market quality in a land-based recirculating system. Animals taken from a barren carry almost no marketable roe, so conditioning is the step that makes them worth harvesting — and the step that gives urchin removal an economic reason to happen.

Between August 2025 and August 2026 we ran that process as a funded research program under a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Small Business Innovation Research award, working with Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. We measured how quickly gonad index accrues and over what cycle length, tested sea cucumbers and Pacific dulse as extractive species in an integrated system, and characterized what the system discharges.

The notes below report what we found, including the parts that didn't work. They are written for people deciding whether a system like this fits a site, a permit or a business, rather than for a journal. Each one states its methods and its limits.

Technical notes

  1. Conditioning barren-sourced purple sea urchins to market gonad index in a land-based system. Three trials, the rate at which gonad index accrues, and the cycle length needed to reach the 15% market benchmark.
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  2. Sea cucumber co-culture does not remediate sea urchin waste at commercially viable stocking ratios. Red sea cucumbers digest urchin waste efficiently but cannot process enough of it to keep up. A mass balance showing how many it would take, and why that number rules the approach out.
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  3. Pacific dulse as a biofilter on sea urchin derived nutrients. 300+ days of continuous culture on urchin feed alone, productivity measured against the published light-response prediction, and a direct measurement of nutrient removal across the tank.
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Data and enquiries
Underlying data are available on request. info@oo-nee.com

This work was supported by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture SBIR Phase I award 2025-70436-44915. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.