Sea urchins - in pictures

Scottish diver Roddie Sloan takes a boat out in his adopted home in Nordskot, northern Norway, which has 80 inhabitants and is 300km inside the Arctic Circle
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Sloan borrows a fishing boat to get his dinghy out to the sea urchin beds he has mapped in the closed season the previous year. Once picked he will not return to the same bed for five years.
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Roddie Sloan begins his dive Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Stronglyocentrotus droebachiensis, the Norwegian Green sea urchin, beloved by chefs and Roddie Sloan
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Sloan comes up from a 45-minute dive in Arctic waters. The winter sun at 1pm just tops the mountain range
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

"The quality starts in the sea – how you pick it up with your hand, how many you have in the net. How you handle it, how you fish it.," says Sloan. Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

“They have changed my life, these beautiful creatures,” says Sloan. “My mother doesn’t understand it. For her, they are still something my Aunty Jean brought back from her holiday."
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

“Our urchin diver is a Scotsman who came to Norway for the love of a woman, and stayed for the cold, pristine waters of his new region of Steigen. If it lives in the north Atlantic and I want it, he will find it." – Magnus Nilsson, chef, Fäviken, Sweden
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

"The urchins have given me a community, friendships, food. They have given me a place, a proper life," says Sloan.
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Seaweed from the northern Norwegian fjords
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Sloan's borrowed 'mother ship', somewhere to warm up, grab a sandwich, coffee. Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

A mahogany clam, which can live for more than 500 years.
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

"The produce arrives from Roddie every Tuesday at Fäviken and it includes the best sea urchins I have ever seen anywhere” – Magnus Nilsson
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Spot of fishing on the trip home. We catch three beautiful cod in ten minutes.
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

The midday sun goes down on northern Norway, three or four hours of winter daylight fade.
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly

Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights, pulse green over Nordskot
Photograph: Howard Sooley for Observer Food Monthly