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April 1 is the opening day of abalone season in northern
California. It's the first opportunity in four months for enthusiasts to
indulge an irrational need to spend an hour or more wading or diving in
unfriendly and frigid coastal waters in hopes of returning home with a few
abalone. On a typical weekend during the season, they'll be out there by the
hundreds; on opening weekend, that number quickly reaches into the thousands.
Why?
 Why would
anyone brave numbing-cold, potentially dangerous surf, unexpected currents, and
rumors of man-eating sharks (spending an estimated $6,000,000 and $10,000,000
every year) for abalone? Presuming it's unlikely that all of the estimated
40,000 recreational abalone harvesters are quite simply nuts, there just might
be some reasonable explanation.
For most, the major part of any explanation lies with the
universal appeal of a treasure hunt. If you went to a local seafood market to
buy abalone, you'd have to pay something in excess of $100/pound for abalone
(assuming you were able to find it at all). Each legal-sized abalone yields a
pound or more of meat and every abalone harvester may take up to three abalone.
Even though a ban on the sale of recreationally harvested abalone sets its
intrinsic value to zero, there's still a perceived value for a limit of abalone
that starts at $300 and easily goes to $600, $700, $800 or more. Where else can
you engage in a relatively inexpensive activity that offers valuable treasure
just for the taking? It's a powerful inducement for the more adventurous kids
of any age.
But, regardless of the appeal of a treasure hunt, there aren't
very many who would partake of this sport were it not any fun. The fact that
more and more people are caught up in this minor mania each year attests to the
fun involved and, by extension, that the dangers and discomforts of abalone
diving can be largely overcome. These web pages are a compilation of the
information needed to invest wisely and play safely in the waters of northern
California. I hope you find them interesting and useful.
As a measure of the appeal of abalone diving apart
from the majority of most of my biases, the following articles on Northern
California Abalone Diving appeared in various newspapers:
Also, there's a recently premiered documentary on
Sonoma and Mendocino County abalone diving. If you run across a copy of The
Hunt for Red Gold, it's worth checking out. It interviews quite a few north
coast divers and does a very good job of capturing the spirit and community
associated with abalone diving. When it's available to purchase, I'll post the
necessary information here.
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On the first day of April every year,
the Highway 1 corridor north of Jenner awakens from a sleepy winter to a sudden
rush of human visitors. Should that date happen to coincide with any weekend
day, the influx borders on spooky; an early morning drive along Highway 1
reveals vehicles parked at every conceivable angle at every roadside pullout,
abandoned (temporarily) by occupants who have gone to the sea. Hours will pass
before some semblance of quiet and normalcy returns to the day and even that
will only last until early the next morning when the ritual will repeat itself.
