Good Thinking

C Disc and C Bud tech suck sea urchins off the sea floor

View 3 Images
The C Bud could conceivably also be used in applications such as ocean cleanup and environmental monitoring
C Robotics
The C Bud could conceivably also be used in applications such as ocean cleanup and environmental monitoring
C Robotics
The C Disc in action
C Robotics
A path cleared by the C Bud through a sea urchin patch
C Robotics
View gallery - 3 images

Harvesting sea urchins by hand can be a slow and tricky business, often resulting in painful pokes through diving gloves. That's where the C Disc and the C Bud come in, as both systems vacuum urchins off the seabed and into a boat, net or shore-located container.

Manufactured by Norwegian firm C Robotics, the two systems are designed not just to spare divers' hands from spine-jabs, but also to speed up and simplify the whole urchin-harvesting process. And while great care does indeed need to be taken not to overfish the world's oceans, purple sea urchins are a destructive invasive species in many regions, and actually need to be culled in order to preserve existing kelp forests.

The C Disc incorporates a handheld suction nozzle, which the diver simply places onto individual urchins. An attached hose delivers the sucked-up urchins either to a surface support vessel, to a net suspended in the water between that vessel and the diver, or to the shore. According to the company, this setup allows for an average catch rate of 1.9 urchins per second.

The C Disc in action
C Robotics

The C Bud also uses a suction nozzle, although that nozzle is built into a remotely-operated tracked vehicle that moves across the sea floor. The vehicle is connected via a hose and an electrical tether to a surface support vessel, where its human operator is guided by real-time video from the C Bud's spotlight-aided cameras. An onboard positioning system helps that person keep track of where the vehicle is relative to themselves, plus the C Bud is able to detect and avoid obstacles on its own.

Collected invertebrate species such as sea urchins, scallops or sea cucumbers travel up the C Bud's hose to the vessel, remaining alive and undamaged. Any accidental bycatch can be manually picked out and thrown back into the ocean, although the C Bud itself also has an onboard size-based sorting system. Sea trials have shown that it can collect up to 16,000 scallops per hour.

A path cleared by the C Bud through a sea urchin patch
C Robotics

Those same trials reportedly indicated that the C Bud causes considerably less disruption to the seabed than more traditional methods such as drag dredging, plus its use results in much less bycatch – additionally, the bycatch it does collect is more likely to survive.

Both the C Disc and the C Bud are already in production, and are in use by commercial clients. The C Disc can be seen in use, in the video below.

Source: C Robotics via Global Seafood Alliance

View gallery - 3 images
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Flipboard
  • LinkedIn
6 comments
Miles Linklater
This is truly disgusting. It's bad enough that we eat these beautiful creatures, but now we use a machine to 'harvest' them. How inhumane.
UncleToad
I've never heard of anyone actually eating sea urchins. Sounds disgusting. So this is a completely pointless machine!
Karmudjun
About time we start culling these destructive seabed creatures from our kelp beds. The changes they induce in the seafloor is atrocious and with the changes in the ocean due to climate change, many other species that depend upon the thriving seabed kelp for sustenance or for protection have been disappearing and urchins especially have overpopulated. I understand the seals love to feast on them, but the rest of the seal's diet has crashed close to many seal nursery shores. This is good to know - but how do we get these foodstuffs to the seals? Or do we keep forcing the seabed to stay as it was pre-climate change without the interdependent ecosystem around them?
Jay Gatto
The roe is delicious, and in large numbers, they reach, they can be destructive. I'm off to get a few, it's better than a poor chicken jammed into a plastic tray.
LowenLowen
I'd like to see the urchins ground up and pumped overboard as fish food.
ljaques
@Miles, these are destructive ocean creatures which eat our kelp beds. Don't be disgusted by some portions of saving the planet, eh? Eating the disturbing creatures gives them purpose.
Now if we could just get the northern spotted owls off the endangered list since it's NOT man who is killing them, NOT timber harvesting (and replanting) but other freakin' owls who are doing the dirty deed.