Uni-Expected!

Camiguin Island, Philippines

We didn’t plan for breakfast to include sea urchin gonads., but the ocean has a way of delivering plot twists.

It was early morning, the kind where the light still feels soft and undecided. We were on a family excursion, bouncing across the water in a banka, that trusty Filipino outrigger boat that’s part ride, part rite of passage, en route to a white sand beach with no one around but us and a few drifting clouds.

The beach? Utterly empty. The kind of place that feels like the ocean pressed pause just for you. I swam out, content and salt-cradled, when suddenly—plop! A man surfaced beside me. Goggles, speedos, and visible goosebumps. He looked like a local... and like he’d just earned a medal in underwater endurance.

In his hand: sea urchins. Big ones. Fresh. Spiky. Possibly judging us. He grinned and offered to sell them. No stall, no cooler, just reef-to-hand delivery.

Right there in the shallows, he cracked open an urchin like a sea-savored treasure chest. Inside were the golden lobes of uni, still pulsing with freshness. We gathered round like wide-eyed contestants on a reality show called Can You Eat That?. And yes! He handed it to us, raw and ready.

My first bite of uni was silky, briny, and strangely intimate, like tasting the sea’s whisper. I didn’t overthink the reproductive anatomy or the fact that I was eating something that just minutes ago was practically hosting plankton. I just went for it.

We passed the halves around. Fingers dipped. Saltwater dripped. No plates, no garnish, just us, the beach, the urchins, and the memory that now clings like sand in a swimsuit. ;)

Absolutely uni-expected.