The urchin divers go after the larger red and dark purple urchins. Which have a large row. Those are the kind found in restaurants and shipped over to Japan.
The smaller purple urchins are the problem.
The urchin picked for food are now harder to find and that state has a lottery for new urchin Licenses. Plus the fact a large number of the urchin divers I knew have pasted on.
There are many articles and youtube videos here is one
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/97580...sts-are-losing
Its going to be a ling time before things return to what we think as normal