It's Official: Sea Urchin is now definately ON the menu.

sea urchin
n.

Any of various echinoderms of the class Echinoidea, having a soft body enclosed in a round, symmetrical, calcareous shell covered with long spines.

Little bastards.

What the above definition doesn't tell you, is that some species of sea urchin (eg. the long-spined diadema, as pictured above) have smaller spines inbetween the long spines that they shoot out at anything that crosses that invisible boundary.

On our second dive of the day, I found that invisible line and swam boldly over it to collect my reward: 12 spines in the hand. I copped it in a particularly sweet spot too.

An interesting fact you may not know about the shot spines of sea urchins, is that once they break the surface of the predators skin, they turn into little hooks so you can't get the bloody things out.


The western dive instructors on the boat gave helpful hints like, "Nothing you can do about that. You're going to be picking them out of your hands for weeks. Try soaking your hand in hot water... you could always dig them out with tweezers."

Fortunately, the Thai boat driver knew what to do...

1) pee on your hand, and

2) apply lemon juice to the area for 1 hour

All in all, it was great advice (I skipped step one though and went straight to the iodine). Five hours later, I could close my hand again and by the next morning my hand was almost back to normal.

Happily, I hear that the insides of sea urchins are quite delicious (like fish roe) and even better - they are cut open while they're still alive! Not that I'm a vengefull person, but it's now a delicacy that I will eat whenever possible.