YORK, Maine (AP) -Maine’s urchin season has barely begun – and it’s already almost over.The urchin season in midcoast and southern Maine began last Monday and ends this Thursday after only 10 fishing days. Diving near Nubble Light from his 14-foot skiff shortly after sunrise last week, Jim Berke was the only urchin diver in sight.

Not long ago, the urchin season was a derby of hundreds of ragtag boats racing out at first light from all points along the coast. A decade ago, the state had more than 2,700 urchin harvesters and a peak harvest of nearly 40 million pounds.

Last year, the harvest had dwindled to just 6.4 million pounds, of which only 1.4 million pounds came from the area from Kittery to Rockland known as zone 1. There are 471 licensed urchin divers in the state today, with only 35 or so actively working in the southern zone.

Jim Berke is still at it after a dozen years. The reductions from last year’s 94-day season allow fishermen to make a little money, hopefully without destroying the fishery’s chances for recovery.

“Let’s face it, last year about this time we were scratching our heads and saying, We’ve still got 70 days and we don’t know where to go,”‘ said Berke, a 41-year-old ex-Marine from Windham. “What few boats there were all in the same spots.”

Maine’s urchin industry took off in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when anybody with a boat and a dive tank could take to the waters in search of the lucrative spiny creatures. Processing houses lined the Portland waterfront and other harbors, where workers scooped out yellow roe, known as uni, most of which went to Japan.

The industry began in southern Maine, but is now centered off Washington County in eastern Maine. The area known as zone 2, from Rockland to the Canadian border, has a 45-day season this year.

For some time, scientists have said that years of aggressive harvesting has affected not only the urchin population, but also the ecology of the Gulf of Maine.

Scientists say the removal of urchins has allowed for rapid growth of seaweeds, which the urchins previously ate. Scientists say the seaweed provides ideal habitat for crabs and other predators which feast on urchins and, in turn, are probably preventing urchins from replenishing themselves.

Berke dives down to a ledge that he remembers fishing five years ago. Back then, it was covered with an army of green urchins that had mowed the rock bare of seaweed.

But after swimming back and forth over the ledge last week, Berke said this spot was now a very different place. His yellow tank and fins showed against a dark mat of kelp and Irish Moss.

Seaweed beds increased statewide from 72 percent of the sea floor in 2001 to 88 percent in 2003, at depths of less than 50 feet, according to a Department of Marine Resources study. Meanwhile, a federal study shows the population of Jonah crabs in Maine, a key urchin predator, quadrupled between 1999 and 2001.

The result may mean the underwater habitat has flipped to an “alternate stable state,” according to DMR scientist Robert Russell, in which seaweed and crabs, not urchins, dominate.

“We see that shift down the coast, farther and farther,” he said.

If there is hope for the future of depleted urchin grounds, it lies with the few remaining pockets of urchins that, left undisturbed, should be able to grow and spawn new congregations, Russell said.

Recent management actions – such as requiring divers to cull urchins underwater, along with a decrease in the maximum legal size and increase in the minimum size – are designed to protect these urchin beds.

But it’s those same pockets, like the one where Berke dove last week, that make the most attractive fishing spots. After a slow day last Tuesday in which he came home with less than 100 pounds, Berke did well on Wednesday. He finished the day with 687 pounds of urchins.

“It’s hard to believe these all came out of York County,” he said as he loaded his catch on the scales of a Portland urchin buyer who agreed to pay him $1.75 a pound.

AP-ES-09-28-04 0231EDT