For Maine sea urchin industry, innovation is key to survival

Sea urchin roe, the reproductive organ of the spiky marine animal, is a delicacy in Japan and the U.S., often used in sushi. It’s sweet, buttery, and bright yellow-orange.

Maine was once a big exporter of sea urchins to Japan, but the industry has shrunk in recent decades due to overfishing, regulations, and climate change. For Atchan Tamaki, a longtime urchin processor and wholesaler in Portland, Maine, adaptation and innovation have always been the key to staying in business.

Since 4 a.m., workers inside a low-slung production facility on a wharf in Portland, Maine, have been carrying out their tasks by hand.

“This is the beginning part of the processing. First, they crack the urchins, like this,” said Tamaki, as he showed how workers use a special tool to extract the desirable roe from the shells without damaging it.

Tamaki’s employees here crack, shuck, clean, and pack about 65,000 sea urchins a day, he said.

Uni is the edible part of the sea urchin. Some of Tamaki’s is sold locally in speciality markets and restaurants in Maine, but most gets shipped to U.S. wholesalers. Tamaki’s been at it for nearly 40 years. When he first started, his daughter, who was four years old at the time, came up with his company’s name.

“She said, ‘I know, I SMELL FISH! Ah? Daddy, that's good!’” Tamaki recalls. “OK, I take I-S-F, ‘I SMELL FISH’ TRADING.”

Tamaki was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. when he was 20 years old. He reluctantly came to Maine to work in a friend’s sushi restaurant in the mid-1980s. But one day on his lunch break, he saw something that set his course.

“It was three boys smashing sea urchins to the wall,” he said, explaining his light-bulb moment. “Oh, sea urchins!”

So he tasted one, totally freaking out the boys, who’d maybe never tried uni. “It was good, good taste!” Tamaki said. He thought, “OK, there’s the urchins here — maybe I could do business?”

But growing his business wasn’t always easy, like when he’d travel up the coast to source sea urchin or interview potential workers.

“They asked me, ‘Who’s the owner?’ I said, ‘I’m the owner.’ And then: ‘Oh, no, thank you. I don’t work under minorities.’” he recalled.

Tamaki said he’s always hired immigrants, and he knows what it’s like to be new here. “For me, is, that's fine. You don't need to speak English. [I’ll] just show you how to do it.”

Today, he has fewer workers. During the peak years for urchins in Maine in the early ‘90s, he had 350 employees. Now, he has 30. There are just fewer sea urchins to process these days.

One way Tamaki has adjusted to a shifting industry is by opening his processing facility to foodies who want to taste fresh uni and other seafood. Customers Abbey Drahnak and Jojo Milana were curious.

“Yeah, we, like, walked in,” laughed Drahnak. “I was like, ‘Ahh … I don't think this is right?’”

“Yeah,” said Milana, “that's how you know you're about to get an authentic meal!”

Diners come here, order seafood downstairs, then eat it at communal tables in his employees’ break room upstairs. Tamaki says it’s not a “real” restaurant, but social media has recently fueled its popularity.

Togue Brawn, who co-chairs Maine’s Seafood Promotion Council, put it into perspective: “It’s not like he set out to become an Instagram darling, but you have to look for other opportunities in order to survive in today's seafood industry.”

Tamaki has found another way to make the most of what he’s got. He showed a visitor another section of his processing facility, where machines are humming.

“This is a crumble machine, and that’s a powder machine …” said Tamaki, as he pointed out racks of drying seafood parts.

Now, Tamaki is turning his urchin and other seafood byproducts, which he used to pay a lot of money to dispose of, into fertilizer and chicken feed. And he sells eggs from the chickens he raises. It’s just one more way he’s staying creative — and staying afloat.