After a minute of controlled breathing, inhale deeply, and then duck below the surface. You’re scouring for rounded shells attached to rocks or to the thick bodies of floating kelp. You’re carrying a foot-long abalone iron and you’re prepared to move fast.
Despite abiding by strict regulations that require free-diving and a catch limit of three a day and 12 a year, the diehard abalone fishermen of northern California received a blow earlier this month.
In response to drastically reduced populations, the California Fish and Game Commission unanimously voted on Dec. 7 to close the red abalone fishery for the entirety of 2018. The fishery, closed for commercial purposes since 1996, is the last viable recreational abalone fishery in California and one of two remaining in the United States.
Though many fishermen travel north to the Sonoma or Mendocino coast for clearer waters and easier access, a select few brave the seas off Marin, where abalone tend to be larger.
Point Reyes Station native Billy Wessner called the closure of the fishery “a hit.” He expressed disappointment that Fish and Game did not take another, less drastic action, such as increasing the size limit for red abalone—which take around 12 years to reach a length of seven inches, the most recent minimum limit. (The world record for red abalone, the largest species in the world, is 12.3 inches.)
“What bums me out the most is that I probably won’t ever be able to take my children out and introduce them to the sport,” Mr. Wessner said. “We can still go look at them because they are still out there, but I won’t be able to teach my kids the whole process of harvesting them.”
For the past decade, diving rules for red abalone—the only species of the seven in California with a robust enough population for a recreational fishery—have been dictated by the state’s Abalone Recovery and Management Plan. The document also outlines management and recovery efforts for all species; two kinds, white and black abalone, are endangered.
For red abalone, the plan includes triggers to reduce allowed catches, or to close diving sites, if population densities fall below certain limits.
The agency is in the process of drafting an updated management plan specifically for the recreational red abalone fishery. That plan is due for release sometime next year, though monitoring and addressing current population drops have taken precedence in recent months.
In 2017, in response to lower numbers, the commission opted to close the red abalone fishery for two additional months of the season, which typically ranges from April through November, with the exclusion of July. Additionally, yearly catch was brought down to 12 abalone per individual.
Dr. Laura Rodgers Bennett, a senior environmental scientist for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife based at the Bodega Marine Lab, said the agency defined a population threshold for a closure in the 2005 fishery’s management plan at 0.3 abalone per square meter. Normally, Dr. Bennett said, the fishery has a density of around 0.5 abalone within that metric, but 2017 saw numbers dwindling to 0.15.
“It’s how drastic this reduction was that prompted the commission to act so decisively,” Dr. Bennett said.
The agency has attributed the decline to several environmental events and trends, which this month it stated acted together to create a “perfect storm.”
Back in 2011, a harmful algal bloom released a toxin into Sonoma County waters, killing large numbers of marine invertebrates. Tens of thousands of abalone died and washed ashore, covering the beaches at the tideline.
Drastic reductions in forests of bull kelp, the sole sustenance for abalone, has also severely impacted populations. During a health assessment last year, for which Fish and Wildlife staffers intercepted divers and took pictures to inspect the mollusks, 25 percent appeared in “various stages of starvation.” (In normal conditions, 99 percent of foraged abalone appear healthy.)
Fish and Wildlife now reports that kelp forests are 93 percent smaller compared to previous years, the result of a variety of interconnected factors.
For example, an outbreak of sea star wasting disease in 2013 killed large numbers of sea stars, which are important predators of invertebrates that live in the kelp forests. That event, along with warmer ocean temperatures, encouraged a population explosion of purple sea urchins, which can decimate kelp. (Fish and Wildlife researchers have discovered that densities of invasive purple sea urchin are now greater than 60 times their historic density in northern California.)
“There has definitely been less kelp, which has made it actually easier to find the abalone without any worry of getting tangled up,” longtime Point Reyes resident Brian Kirven said. Somewhat unnervingly, however, not only is there less kelp, but the kelp that remains is weakened, Mr. Kirven said. “When you try to hold onto something down there, they just come loose. They aren’t growing leaves, they’re just dead,” he said.
In the coming year, Fish and Wildlife will prioritize research and monitoring to improve the understanding of the impacts of the reduced bull kelp and to find methods that may help the kelp forest ecosystem recover. The agency’s marine invertebrate management team will work to identify opportunities to aid kelp forest recovery potential under various conditions.
Dr. Bennett urged Marin residents to contribute to that effort in a few ways, including reporting to the agency any areas where bull kelp is dense. Because densities are so low along the entire West Coast, she said it would be beneficial to monitoring efforts to know where the kelp might be successfully cropping up in new areas.
Any irregular abalone occurrences, such as noticeable die-offs, should also be reported, she said.
Commercial abalone fishing in California dates back to the mid-1800s. But abalone catch had fallen to 229,500 pounds by 1996, roughly 4 percent of the peak catch, and the commercial fishery was closed statewide that year.
A year later, the entire coast of California south of San Francisco closed for recreational abalone fisheries. North of San Francisco, regulations have continued to tighten to protect the declining populations of the state’s last abalone fishery.
The northern California recreational red abalone fishery has been limited since 1953 to breath-hold diving in hopes of protecting deeper abalone that free divers could not easily reach.
In addition to evolving rules regarding seasonality, shell size and even regional coastline closures, fishermen today are also required to use an extensive reporting system for their catch as mandated by Fish and Wildlife, which has been known to send representatives to camp out at local spots to make sure divers are abiding by the regulations.
“Naturally, we’re hunters and gatherers and this was one of the last ways to practice that, in a way that had nothing to do with money,” Mr. Wessner lamented. “There are hardly any fishermen that dive in Marin. It’s lonely and cold and really hard to access the beaches, the water gets stirred up and cloudy. But it’s where I learned.”