The Delicacy (Jason Wise, 2019): USA

Reviewed by Kirsten Anderberg. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2020.

“The Delicacy” is a documentary by director Jason Wise, about the sea urchin, and its role in nature and cuisine. Filmed around the Channel Islands in the Santa Barbara Channel, this documentary focuses on the sea urchin, or its gonads aka “uni,” as a gourmet food, and the labor involved diving for it. Uni tastes like “being kissed by a mermaid,” says one of the cast. The film talks about the ecological systems surrounding uni, and humans’ historical relationship with this marine animal which does not have an obvious face, as the film notes. While the footage is in areas of beauty, such as the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands, this movie does not provide stunning nature photography predominantly but instead is a movie of interviews, necessary nature footage and historic montages.

The Channel Islands are known for their rich kelp forests, with kelp like brown trees growing vertically in the turquoise water. But it is also well known that divers can get tangled in kelp, and die, thus diving in these forests are risky. Kelp forests are rich in marine life and become the backdrop for this documentary. Sea urchins eat a lot of kelp and can wipe out kelp forests which is why people were paid in the past to kill sea urchins. The sea urchin’s taste is influenced by the taste of the kelp it eats, and San Miguel Island is said to have some of the best tasting uni.  Sea otters eat sea urchins, and great white sharks eat sea otters. When one animal is taken out of the mix, an imbalance occurs.

“The Delicacy” educates its audience to the Russian fur trade which decimated the sea otter populations in CA in the past. Luckily, due to no deep anchorage in Big Sur, the sea otters were able to survive there. But for the most part, sea otters became scarce, and sea urchin populations exploded due to no predators, which in turn affected the kelp forests. As sea otters returned, great white sharks also came to the area to eat the otters.

A local diver named James “Jimmy” Robinson, in 1994, had a serious encounter with a great white shark off of San Miguel Island. It is a little odd how the footage of Jimmy, and even Jimmy’s story, are patchwork quilted into this film. But his story is relevant to the dangers divers risk when collecting sea urchins. Hopefully, hearing Jimmy’s story and watching this film will give people some appreciation for the labor, and lives lost, in the hunt to bring uni to gourmet tables.