Unlike American Abalone, this sea-based aquaculture farm only sells live abalone and much of it within the immediate area. While Ebert's giant sea snails grow up in a series of tanks filled with continually freshened seawater from the adjacent Pacific, the abs at Monterey Abalone reside in cages under a municipal wharf, where the mollusks live on sheets of plastic in metal mesh enclosures that look sort of like large file drawers filled with snails.
Frequently-harvested kelp and a little locally-cultured red algae are pushed into the cages and quickly consumed by the hungry critters. Around for 25 years, Monterey Abalone is run by Art Seavey and Trevor Fay, who try to duplicate the environment of wild abalone as much as possible while preventing natural predators like crabs, sea stars, octopuses, sea otters and other species from gobbling up their abs. The strong current that runs through the bay carries away waste from their farm, which then feeds other ocean residents, according to Fay.
The only way you can ruin abalone is if it's overcooked," Fay explains. His farm and livestock are reached via a tall ladder under a trap-door in the middle of his tiny facility at the end of a pier built in where John Steinbeck once trod. Multiple wet planks laid between the pilings under the pier give access to stacked cages where about 4, abalones silently eat and slowly grow in the cool bay waters. A system of ropes and pulleys is used to lift the cages out of the water frequently so more kelp can be stuffed in to feed the hungry abalone.
It's like cutting the grass out in the front yard; it's going to come right back. As Seavey and Fay have performed research to fine-tune their operation, lucrative new sidelines have emerged. Since red algae is quite hard to collect, Monterey Abalone began growing it nearby so they could add a small amount to the diet of their abalone to "enhance flavor and appearance," as Fay describes it. After being contacted by Bay Area chef Daniel Patterson, who was looking for sources of algae for his high-end kitchens, Monterey Abalone added a new product to their business.
Says Fay: "We began culturing different species of algae and collecting sustainable wild species. Chefs are food scientists that can do 1, things with these ingredients. Daniel is the one that kicked that off," he states.
It can be dried and used as seasoning, or eaten raw or used in soups or pickled. Bull kelp is just delicious," Fay notes, explaining that his algae supply is now being sold to consumers as well as chefs. Like Tom Ebert, the crew at Monterey Abalone is plugged into the community of scientists, aquafarmers and fishermen whose life is the marine world.
Thus Fay and team started selling other seafood obtained through their contacts. We buy them from Santa Barbara. We bring up a load every other week of lobsters, Kellet's whelks, sea cucumbers and giant red urchins," Fay reports.
Chefs from notable restaurants and sushi bars now have Monterey Abalone on speed dial to get their hands on these items but consumers can buy them, too. When it comes to abalone, the company only sells live mollusks, so shucking and cleaning must be executed by the buyer.
Novices get an illustrated sheet explaining the process but those with practice can, like Fay and Seavey, produce a glistening steak in about two minutes, with four steaks considered an entree portion. For those who want all the work done by others, fresh California red abalone is sometimes on the menu at a variety of Bay Area restaurants for a pretty price, including:. Wine Country - Meadowood, St. Helena; French Laundry, St. A renowned regional chef who's been a particular fan of local abalone is David Kinch of Michelin three-star Manresa in Los Gatos.
A sometime surfer, Kinch has said that farmed abalone is more tender than the wild variety -- an opinion shared by many other experts -- and he is so enamored of the flavorful sea snail that the cover of his cookbook, Manresa: An Edible Reflection , pictures a stylized abalone shell. Gallagher also uses the abalone's liver to create an umami-rich sauce for his preparations. While local farmed abalone might win as a superior ingredient compared to wild abalone according to some, sport diving -- without scuba gear, which is illegal -- is still a passionate pastime for many people, despite the fact that this sometimes-perilous activity kills upward of seven divers annually.
The shortened season, shrinking of the allowed catch -- now 12 per year -- and other restrictions don't dent the throngs who search for wild mollusks, primarily in the murky waters of Sonoma and Mendocino counties. Catching abalone anywhere south of the Golden Gate Bridge is prohibited.
These events are attended by the rules-following abalone aficionados who adhere to the tight hunting restrictions imposed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Insiders like Tom Ebert report seeing large, clearly bootleg wild abalone for sale in Chinatown markets, a distressing sight. The poaching destroys everything.
Thieves in California have been caught not just with contraband red abalone but with other varieties from even more fragile populations. Of the plus abalone species around the world, there are six present in our state in addition to the reds: blacks, whites, greens, pinks, pintos and threaded. Ab rustlers use scuba gear and sneak to quiet, unmonitored corners of the long California coastline to steal their prizes, with plenty of buyers equally unbothered by the effect of these crimes on the wild habitats.
Like many other native flora and fauna decimated by careless humans, abalone were once so abundant that they could be gathered from a beach at low tide. Vintage photos from the early s show massive piles of abalone shells as commercial operations geared up. After scuba technology arrived, a diver could collect 2, or more abalone daily so not surprisingly, red abalone populations plummeted during the '70s and '80s. The California government finally took action in the '90s after the collapse of the commercial abalone fishery.
Closing the commercial fishery and tightening regulations on sport diving in California helped the local ecology but demand worldwide for the delicious, pricey mollusk is undiminished. Fortunately, abalone farming emerged in the modern era to feed the craving and aquaculture operations exist in many coastal countries. In fact, American abalone production is far below that of other nations like Chile, Australia, South Africa and, particularly, Asian countries.
The big kahuna is China, which grows as much farmed abalone as all other nations combined according to Tom Ebert. Nor are they concerned with environmental issues, apparently. In abalone-mad nations like China and Japan, "farming" often means selecting a coastal bay, then hiring divers to remove or kill off all natural predators in that location before establishing abalone colonies, he says. Swezey, also a scientist at a commercial abalone farm near Santa Barbara, said future restoration efforts will have to focus on which animals are the hardiest and what enables them to tolerate acidification.
Coaxing abalone to reproduce in the wild or in a lab is not easy. In the lab or at abalone farms, humans must try to first create the right conditions for abalones to become reproductive, through diet, water temperature and light, and then have to predict when the males and females are ready to spawn.
Aquilino was disappointed last month when none of the two dozen animals she thought were ready spawned. Captive breeding of white abalone began in , when it became the first marine invertebrate to receive endangered species status.
Scientists at the Channel Islands Marine Resource Institute bred over , juveniles, but most perished from a disease called withering syndrome. Recovery efforts moved to Bodega Lab in , which now breeds about 20, juveniles a year. The goal is to increase to ,, Aquilino said. Last year, they introduced 1, captive-bred abalone in Southern California.
Figuring out the best spots for introducing abalone is an area that Todd Braje, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State University also affiliated with the California Academy of Sciences, researches from a historical perspective. Braje studied archaeological shell middens, or abalone trash piles up to 12, years old left behind by the Chumash tribe and their ancestors, on the northern Channel Islands, for a study he published in After determining where abalone fishing was most intensive based on the location of middens, he compared that to maps of the most popular commercial fishing grounds from the 19th and 20th century.
Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan sfchronicle. Most Popular. John Blanchard In addition to the white and red species, black, pink and green abalones were also commercially fished two other native species, pinto and flat abalones, were not.
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