Sarasota couple in spiny situation over harvesting too many sea urchins

It’s not an unheard of delicacy. In Japan, it’s known as uni and is eaten raw. On the Mediterranean coast, ricci di mare is sometimes topped on pasta.

But a Sarasota couple in their 70s is in hot water over bagging too many sea urchins to eat during a picnic.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission received a call on March 18 about six people netting and raking up the spiny sea creatures, putting them in bags and eating some of them on the shore of City Island, which is home to the Salty Dog restaurant and Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

The commission said it has gotten multiple calls about people harvesting more than the daily limit, which is five individuals of any one species of tropical ornamental life species within the 20 organism bag limit per person.

The FWC officers who responded to the scene saw one man take a white plastic bag from the mangroves and put it on a picnic table, where two women started cutting open some of the sea urchins.

In total, the officers discovered three plastic bags filled with 55 sea urchins of the same species, according to the FWC report.

Giuseppe and Addolorata Pinto admitted to knowing about the daily limit and being the only ones harvesting the sea urchins to feed their friends. It wouldn’t matter if all of the people at the scene said they together harvested the sea urchins — it still would have been above the limit, according to FWC.

Seven of the sea urchins had already been cut open, with 48 still intact. All were put back into the water.

The couple each faces a second-degree misdemeanor charge for over the bag limit of marine life organisms.

This story was originally published March 31, 2017 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Sarasota couple in spiny situation over harvesting too many sea urchins."