Danger for Ocean Divers : Abalone--Delicacy to Eat, Peril to Find

Jeff Irwin’s quarry was a seven-inch-round sea mollusk, and neither the bone-chilling water, the pounding and turbulent surf nor the threat of great white sharks could deter him.

Irwin would take a deep breath, then dive 10 feet or more to the rocky, kelp-covered ocean floor and find his prey, which in the murky water off this Northern California town looks a lot like the rocks on which it lives.

“In a swimming pool, I can stay under water maybe 15, 30 seconds. When there’s something at the bottom of the ocean that I want, I can stay under a minute, a minute and a half,” said the 39-year-old typewriter salesman from the San Francisco suburb of Los Altos.

He and hundreds of other divers descended on the state’s northern shoreline over the last week in pursuit of Haliotis rufescens --the red abalone. Abalone season has opened, and it brings a bit of a challenge, an element of danger and, for the lucky, a gourmet delicacy fit--and priced--for a king.

At first glance, “ab diving” seems to be the perfect sport--easy picking along a pristine coast.

Posted on a bulletin board here 100 miles north of the Golden Gate, California Fish and Game Department directions imply that abalone picking is not much harder than bending over. Instruction No. 1: “Slide iron under abalone’s foot.” Instruction No. 2: “Lift handle of iron.”

Although some abalone divers say it is about that simple, Jim Cooke knows better. “I’ve never liked abalone enough to risk my life for it,” said Cooke, who has spent the last nine years as a search-and-rescue volunteer for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department.

In any given season, two to eight divers will die, battered against rocks by an unexpected wave or carried off by a surging current. Dozens of others will be hurt, occasionally by shark attacks. At a rate of a little less than one a year, abalone divers are the most frequent human victim of great whites, according to experts at Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. Last weekend, one diver had to be flown by helicopter to a hospital after a wave tossed him against a rock.

Fish and Game Department regulations prohibit sport divers from using scuba tanks, a rule designed to make abalone diving more difficult and to preserve the stock. Divers are limited to a mask, snorkel, weight belt and wet suit.

“It’s in the nature of abs to be in the roughest places. The biggest abs are in the least desirable places,” like crevices in rocks at depths of 10 to 40 feet, said Irwin, who began abalone diving a year ago.

Still, abalone are so plentiful here that experienced divers--it only takes a few dives to get the hang of it--can get their legal limit of four in 15 minutes. That is about the time it takes to find a rocky, kelp-covered stretch of sea bottom, measure the shells to make sure they are the legal minimum of seven inches and pry them off with a curved piece of steel designed for the job.

“I’m not saying it’s easy,” said John Kaplanis, 26, a San Francisco carpenter, taking a break from diving. But as Kaplanis tells it, some of the biggest hazards are hangovers and having to clean the beasts. And he thinks some of the best divers have large bellies and smoke heavily. One such diver was under for so long that he thought the man had drowned, but the fellow did surface--with three abalone and a nosebleed.

Some sport divers fear the days of plentiful abalone are numbered. This could be the last season that they have the northern waters exclusively to themselves.

To help revive the state’s faltering commercial abalone industry, Randy Brannock, head of California Abalone Assn., the industry trade group, wants to conducted a controlled experimental harvest by commercial abalone fishermen along the Northern California coast as early as next season.

Commercial abalone diving is limited to the Central and Southern California coasts, where there are precious few abalone. The stock has been depleted by pollution, over-harvesting, poaching and, perhaps most to blame, sea otters, which flourish on the Central Coast but have not migrated north.

The 850,000-pound annual commercial catch is a third of what it was in its heyday 20 years ago. As a result, abalone, if it can be found commercially, goes for more than a dollar a bite in restaurants and $45 a pound retail. (Sport divers are not permitted to sell their catch.)

“There is no biological reason at all that the north coast is not open to us. It’s all political,” Brannock said. But, he added, when abalone is at issue, “common sense” tends to disappear.

“The sportsmen are really intense over that resource,” said Earl Ebert, a Fish and Game Department official who heads a committee studying the proposal for experimental commercial diving and has received scores of letters and calls decrying the possible opening of commercial diving.

On the first days of the hunt, controversy seemed far off. After a day of diving, campers were opening beers and going through the long process of gutting and tenderizing the mollusks.

“All the marine life, the seals, the urchins, the abalone--it’s a stress relief,” said Frank Gallo, 27, a paramedic. “When you’re out there, you’re not thinking about work or home or anything. And there is something nice about getting your own food.”

Gallo does not like to talk about the hazards of diving, even though he knows about them better than most. In December, while diving off Monterey on a spear-fishing expedition with a friend, he was mauled by a great white shark. He is undergoing therapy to regain full use of one of his hands before he can go back to work as a paramedic in Santa Clara County. But, he said, the chance of being hurt while ab diving is far less than getting hit by a car--”as long as you’re smart about it.”