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Red Abalone (Haliotis rufescens) of the Pacific coast is the largest abalone species in the world, commonly measuring 6 to 8 inches across the widest part of the shell. The largest recorded red abalone was taken in September, 1993 off the Humboldt coast by John Pepper of Half Moon Bay, measuring 12 5/16 inches. Reds are one of about 130 abalone species world wide, eight along our coast. Abalone is a gastropod: a snail, in other words.
Red Abalone (Haliotis rufescens)
Abalone is a top tourist attraction on the north coast of California, counted among the spectacular beauty of the rocky undulating coast, pocket beaches, and quaint little towns. Nearly 100 percent of California's sport abalone effort is concentrated along the Sonoma and Mendocino County coasts (most of that is in Mendocino) infusing an estimated $9.5 million into the sleepy economies. There are times during "abalone tides" when the services of our small communities are stretched beyond capacity. The traffic along Highway One becomes congested, and every turnout is packed with cars. People in wetsuits wander through the bushes, down cliffs, even in the markets.
They come because this is the area of greatest abundance, and the abalone are easy to get. Some build an entire vacation around it. Expensive dive equipment, boats and outboards are common. The ritual of getting the abalone, often requiring pre-dawn preparation because of tidal factors, is followed by cleaning, pounding, and eating -- much of the time done by family groups and dive clubs. Large abalone feeds are the rule. The sound of abalone being pounded into tenderness can take on the dimension of a construction project. Having eaten it prepared a dozen different ways, I wonder how the frenzy over this creature could be motivated by its mild, veal-like flavor alone.
Although sport abaloneing is its own reward, some folks justify the time and expense by attaching a perceived value to their catch. Commercial abalone prices sky-rocketed in recent years from increasing world demand and decreasing wild stocks. In Japan, for example, a single abalone can bring $100, and in California, $35 a pound! I said "perceived value" because sport-taken abalone cannot be legally sold, and in fact, commercial fishing for wild abalone is no longer permitted in California waters. This, however, has not stopped sportsters from boasting about the dollar value. A cleaned abalone can weight a pound or more, and since a person is allowed to have four, the perceived value can be $150 to $200 for a morning's catch.
Most animal crises-type stories today are about an animal whose numbers fell when the white man became involved. The abalone story, however, has a different twist. It begins with the removal of the major shellfish predator -- the sea otter -- by over 150 years of intensive fur hunting beginning in 1741. The unthreatened abalone, a nocturnal crevice dweller, began an over-population campaign that went unchecked for decades. Without predation, they overflowed their crevice refuges and began to crowd the outer surfaces of the rocks, in some places piling on top of each other.
The first to recognize an opportunity in this huge excess and take commercial advantage it were Chinese fishermen sometime after the Gold Rush. They harvested the abalone from skiffs, dislodging them from the rocks and hooking them up with long poles. Annual harvests of mainly green and black abalone reached 4 million pounds by 1879. In an era when California was overtly anti-Chinese and just beginning to wake up to resource protection, a law disallowing abalone fishing in less than 20 feet of water put them out of business.
The next phase of harvest went to Japanese divers who eventually introduced hard hat technology. By 1935, annual harvests climbed back to nearly 4 million pounds. World War II, and the internment of Japanese Americans, ended their involvement. Commercial abalone diving would be dominated by European-Americans from then on.
The modern commercial harvest began with a low of 100 thousand pounds in 1942 to a high of 5.4 million pounds in 1957. Landings remained high until the early 1970's when a steady decline began. In 1991, landings for all species of abalone were less than 400 thousand pounds.
The story from this point is about the competition for the remaining harvestable abalone. Competitors included, of course, the commercial divers who wanted to keep their businesses alive. There was a thriving re-established sea otter population, numbering about 2,000 animals, all consuming 23% to 37% of their body weight each day in all manner of sea creatures including abalone. There was an increasing number of sportsters, both divers and rock pickers, entering the sport each season, harvesting over a million pounds a year from central and northern California (down from 3.4 million pounds in 1986). Finally, there was (and still is) the black market where illegally obtained abalone fetched high prices, involving people in both the commercial and sport sectors.
Along the southern California coast (Point Conception southward), the resource was a disaster. Commercial and sport divers had taken their toll, but a final blow came from industrial waste and big city sewage practices, wiping out large areas of kelp forest and decimating many important marine species. Some areas had been closed for years to taking abalone, and periodic checks showed no recovery.
And along the central California coast (Point Conception to San Francisco) where all the competitors converged, harvestable abalone were declining. Changes in the sport regulations, such as the reduction of the sport limit from 4 abalones to just 2 in possession, were enacted after the damage had been done. A recent law had allowed commercial divers into an area previously open only to sport divers, increasing pressure on the remaining abalone there. And where the sea otters foraged, legal-size abalone didn't exist.
Finally, in 1998 the California Legislature closed all fishing for wild abalone, both sport and commercial, south of San Francisco until the resource could recover and once again support a fishery.
Along the northern California coast (north of San Francisco), where sport abalone is still permitted, everything is different. Commercial abalone diving is banned. There are no sea otters. Where central and southern California sport divers were allowed to use scuba equipment, giving them long bottom time in relatively deep water, only breath holding -- no scuba -- may be used in these waters for taking abalone. This allows access only to the shallow segment of the abalone population, preserving the deep-water stocks for repopulating picked-over areas. A bonus for the region has been the commercial urchin industry. They have reduced sea urchin stocks that directly compete with abalone. Evidence indicates that abalone have an accelerated growth rate when food and space are unlimited.
Clearly, the northern California abalone resource is a success story, but not without its problems. Although considered healthy, it is actually unknown how the resource is doing -- whether it is sustained or declining. There is fear that poaching of the deep water stocks will permanently damage the cycle of recruitment into shallow water.
While abalone poaching has taken on the dimensions of organized crime, sport divers are just as much in the equation of decline. Roadside check points operated by California Department of Fish and Game have shown that about 13% of the sport divers are in violation, much of which is possessing over the limit of four abalones per person. Most of these folks are trying to keep plenty on hand in the home freezer. They fail to see the damage they are doing or the example they are setting for family, friends, and neighbors. Some, however, hoard them to sell later. North coast abalone, still plentiful and easy to get, are the obvious target of black market traffickers. The $35-per-pound price tag is a definite incentive.
So, for the moment, let's put aside flavor and greed as motivators. I would then ask of the rock picker, "What makes you get up at 4:30 to 5:00 AM, struggle into a cold, damp wetsuit, wade waist deep into the icy water, reach into a dark hole where unknown evils lurk, and feel around for a snail? And of the diver I would ask, "Why would you spend $1,000-plus on equipment, spend all day in a wetsuit through all the hours of preparations and cleanup, when the actual diving time for the abalone is probably no more than 30 minutes?" The answer to these and a hundred unmentioned hardships must be, "Because it's the sport." It requires skill and know-how. The period of apprenticeship necessary to achieve any reasonable success is like a rite of passage. Milestones are one's first abalone, first limit, first 9 incher, first 10 incher. There's camaraderie, swapping tales and lore, and sharing food. For some folks, it's a sub-culture. There's even an "Abalone Song."
Anchor Bay, it seems, is the geographical center of the remaining red abalone sport fishery. I'm not sure if this gives us any special perspective, but you can't live here, or even visit here, without feeling its presence. The giant red abalone is no mere snail.
