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Abalone
Poaching for fun and profit
For those who might suggest I'm being a little flip with the title
for this page, please understand it's largely a defensive mechanism; without a
little injected humor, it'd be hard not to cry. The northern California
situation was summarized in Poaching Pressures on Northern
California's Abalone Resource presented at the 3rd Annual Abalone Symposium
in October 1997. In southern California, every hopeful sign for recovery of
localized stocks has been destroyed by subsequent poaching activities:
- Transplanting of reproducing Green Abalone into depleted areas
resulted in a recovering population until the animals grew large enough to
begin emerging from the cracks and crannies they hide in during their first few
years of life. At that point, they disappeared due to poaching pressures.
- A recovering population of Pink Abalone off Santa Barbara
Island disappeared about the same time an influx of "Mexican" Pink Abalone
showed up in Santa Barbara.
- Surveys off San Miguel in 1997 documented a sizable, healthy
population of Red Abalone that, hopefully, could serve as the seed for the
southern California recovery. A return to the same area in 1998 revealed a
substantial percentage of the previous year's abalone had disappeared.
Suggestions will be heard that the "mysterious" disappearances of
localized populations of southern California's abalone could be explained by
pollution, El Nino effects, withering syndrome, or other natural causes. But,
when it comes to tracing these events, the key is to "follow the shells." Where
natural causes are at play, abalone shells are left behind. When there are no
animals and no shells, poachers are invariably the cause. The Green, Pink, and
Red Abalone disappearances described above include the disappearance of the
shells.
Unfortunately, the situation isn't going to change. One seafood
processor, who claims to have stockpiled abalone before the closure of
commercial harvesting, was charging $100 per frozen abalone in 1998. By 2001,
the price had increased to $100+ per pound with black market abalone going for
as much as $120, each. Even large quantities of poached abalone are worth
upwards of $50 a piece. That's a lot of financial motivation for poachers.
The following is a list of on-line materials related to the
Abalone Poaching Problem.
Substantial additional information on abalone poaching can be
gleaned from this collection of articles on the
subject as well as this list of this poachers.
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