echinoderms

one of the side effects of living in the mediterranean as a north american is the recurring question: “who first decided that looked good to eat?” there are the thick shelled oysters for one thing. there is the horrific looking monkfish. there are sole and turbot with two disturbing looking eyes on the same side of their heads. there are the tentacled octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. there is something called a violet, which looks like a warty kind of potato and yields a mustard colored iodine flavored mollusk inside. and finally, there is the sea urchin, which looks like a pincushion and can leave spines inside a swimmer’s foot that migrate into deep tissue or lodge against bones or nerves. yet still, one day, several hundred thousand years ago, some swimmer looked down at the bottom of a shallow bay and saw a slowly moving spined black orb, and thought, “hmmm. i wonder.”

sea urchin shells