To squeeze, to eat, or to leave well alone?

Ever since my long-distant childhood, I have been intrigued by a simple, slightly odd, and very tough-looking creature that makes its home in the inter-tidal space – that strip of shoreline that lies between the high- and low-water mark. This gnarly little beast is a humble, yet quite remarkable animal known as cunjevoi [cun-ja-voy] – or ‘cungie’ [cun-gee] as I was taught to call it and pronounce it.

There are several varieties, most being found along the southern coastlines of Africa, Australia, and South America with the scientific name for the variant that grows in our Australian inter-tidal realm being Pyura praeputialis. It is important to know the type – especially [as you will see] when it comes to edibility, with the Chilean variety the most often eaten. Our Australian variant has been an Aboriginal delicacy when properly prepared by beating, soaking, and cooking [Ref: 1] – akin to preparing abalone.

At first glance, cungie looks like a strange, brown, and not very attractive sea-shore plant. But no … cungie is a most remarkable animal that belongs to a large family of sea animals called Tunicates. Tunicates are round-bodied animals, their soft inner parts protected by an outer wall – or tunic – and can be free-floating or rock-attached. They are distantly related to other ‘rock-tethering’ animals like the corals and sea-pens.

Cungie has a thick, craggy, outer ‘skeleton’ that is covered with green/brown algae. This outer skin [or ‘tunic’ … hence ‘Tunicates’] protects the softer inner body that contains the intestines, heart, excretory organs, rudimentary neurones, testes, and ovaries – yes, testes and ovaries are both present within the same animal. This remarkable creature is thus a hermaphrodite and reproduces by having sex with itself!

As a boy, I loved to wander along the rock shelf of the North Lorne beach, squeezing cungie and seeing how far I could make them squirt. But while I didn’t know at the time, doing this was wrong. What I didn’t understand was that by squeezing these nifty beasties and forcing them to expel their contained water before they had properly processed it, I was depriving them of the nutrient and oxygen stores they needed while stranded high and dry on their rock at low tide. By emptying them of water, I was denying them the chance to replenish their survival needs. I was harming them, stressing them. ‘Squirting’ cungie might be loads of fun for small boys, but it is potentially lethal for the cungie. So … how do cungie ‘work’?

When a cungie is submerged at high tide, it gulps in seawater through its inhalant aperture [or siphon] – one of its two external openings. This gulp of seawater is then passed across gill slits that extract food particles and oxygen: the food passes to the stomach and intestines, the absorbed oxygen provides respiration. The wastewater is then ejected [squirted] from the exhalant aperture by a muscular contraction of its excretory system. Cungie squirts can often be seen erupting from cungie-covered rocks at low tide – it can be strangely comical – and I have often thought a skilled time-lapse videographer could choreograph their squirts to Sibelius or Mozart!

Sam Malone, a 16-year-old Queensland schoolboy, was highly commended [Ref: 2] at the 2019 Sleek Geeks Science Eureka Prize for his work on cunjevoi. Sam shows what a little research and endeavour can achieve. Get your kids to watch his 4.5-minute video!

When cungie spawn, they release a cloud of free-swimming larvae- uncannily like the tadpole stage of a frog. After attaching head-first to a rock platform, the larvae morph into the gnarled creatures so familiar to us – their only enemy! No natural predators threaten a cungie except man – the fishermen who can decimate these ancient creatures from their chosen rock shelf when seeking bait, small children who unwittingly desiccate them by emptying their water reservoirs, or cooks who celebrate them as a culinary delicacy in some parts of the world.

A culinary delicacy? … well, yes! Nearly 20 years ago, I had the fortune to spend 10 days on a Mediterranean island gem, Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon and the best-kept secret of France. At the tippy-top of the ‘finger’ of Corsica – a promontory of land that gestures the island’s rude defiance to mainland France to the north – lies the ancient Roman seaport of Centuri.

Dining one evening at the excellent Le Langoustier, I was surprised to see some segments of cooked cunjevoi nestling demurely in their seafood platter.

It tasted rather bitter but not altogether unpleasant and was not unlike the adjacent cup of sea urchin in texture and appearance. Not previously having met cungie at the table, I googled. I found that while cungie is a delicacy in Chile and scattered Mediterranean places, it does not appear to have widely ‘caught on’.

Wondering why, I found that …

  • Bush Tucker and Traditional Aboriginal Diets [Ref: 1] notes cungie to be starchy, fibrous, and poisonous when raw but could be safely roasted after repeated pounding and soaking of the stems to remove their poisons.
  • A question posed at Redditt.com [Ref: 3] read… “has anyone out there ever eaten cunjevoi? I have heard they are popular in Chile and were a common food source for Aboriginal Australians. I aim to sear a piece on a Weber and have a tentative taste [but] thought I’d see if any brave souls have gone before me?” As the question remains unanswered and no result was posted, let us hope the questioner survived.
  • A timely warning was given at another site [Ref: 4]: … “be careful where you collect them … [like oysters and mussels] they filter [and can concentrate] any impurities in the seawater. Collecting near storm-water drains or dog-walking sites [note, here, the North Lorne rocks] can pose problems“.
  • Finally, the most reliable scientific source came from a paper: ‘Wild and cultured edible tunicates: a review’ by Gretchen Lambert and co-authors [Ref: 5] from four highly reputable US marine research sites.  It confirmed edibility but cautioned about selection and preparation.

So … before you rush out to decimate the GOR rock shelves, consider [a] the animal; [b] the site; [c] the complex preparation; [d] all the other [more] edible joys from the sea. Perhaps cungie should be left in peace to be cungie, and an occasional – but not too frequent – inter-tidal squeeze-toy for young children.

John Agar

References