Lunch was tantalisingly close to my fingers. Flippering furiously to keep in position, I confirmed the sea urchin had a strip of kelp attached, waving in the clear water. That, so I was told, meant it was a sought-after female (“the lady likes to wear jewellery”, as Paxiot men will explain with a wink). All I had to do was detach the urchin from the seabed with the dinner fork in my left hand, then scoop it up using the basket in my other hand. But those sharp spikes... Dithering, I drifted out of reach.
HARBOUR HIGHLIGHTS Loggos is one of the island’s three pretty waterside settlements
In swept my fellow urchin hunter, Ben Hobdell. He deftly swiped ‘my’ urchin and a couple more, then Supermanned to the surface. My pride deflating as rapidly as my lungs, I followed. This was my umpteenth attempt to grab an urchin that morning. Time to accept defeat.