After confirming reports of dead red abalone and sea stars in coastal areas of Sonoma County, including Bodega Bay, and evaluating an impact statement prepared by California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) divers, the California Fish and Game Commission will consider issuing an emergency closure of the abalone season for all or portions of the Sonoma coast today. Biologists with DFG suspect that a local red tide-bloom induced poisons or a lack of oxygen that killed the invertebrate. Die-offs have occurred in the past along the northern California coast when similar weather and bloom conditions were present.