White Abalone May Be Listed as Endangered

Bottom-dwelling white abalone that once flourished from Ventura County to Baja California are slipping toward extinction, prompting a conservation group to request that the snail-like animal be declared an endangered species.

If the request is approved, as is expected, white abalone would be the first marine invertebrate to join a select group of sea creatures along the California coast--including sea otters, steelhead trout and blue whales--protected by the Endangered Species Act.

“It signals that as we are learning more about the ocean, what we are learning is we have a significant negative impact on the sea,” said Gary Davis, marine biologist at Channel Islands National Park. “We’ve collectively believed the ocean is so big and productive that what we do has little effect. This is a recognition [that] white abalone are in danger of becoming extinct very soon.”

Once so abundant they littered the sea floor like spilled poker chips, abalone were easy pickings for fishermen. Their plump, gooey flesh showed up on restaurant menus while the shimmering interior of their shells adorned jewelry and, as ashtrays, had cigarettes snuffed out on them.

White abalone inhabit reefs so deep they weren’t even identified by scientists until the 1940s. But nature had trouble keeping up with human demand and by the late 1970s overfishing had decimated their populations, as well as seven other abalone species in California.

Whereas once there were nearly 4 million white abalone, mainly concentrated around deep reefs at the Channel Islands, today probably no more than 1,600 remain along hundreds of miles of shoreline in California and Mexico. Several years of submarine searches off the Channel Islands showed that just a dozen white abalone remain in places where tens of thousands once crawled along the ocean bottom, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

So few white abalone remain that scientists fear they may be too dispersed on the ocean bottom to find each other and reproduce. The California Fish and Game Commission banned commercial and sport fishing of abalone in Southern California in 1997 and sharply curtailed abalone harvesting on the north coast.

“The white [abalone] is in the most trouble,” said Dan Frumkes, director of a conservation network for the Virginia-based American Sportfishing Assn. “It should be listed. There’s over exploitation in general in fisheries. I know the abalone are being taken illegally in large numbers. There are disease issues and we are still trying to understand that.”

On April 29, the Tucson-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the national fisheries service, seeking protection for the white abalone. The service will begin a review in the next several months before reaching a decision.

Although currently protected by fishing bans, adding the white abalone to the endangered species list increases the animal’s stature, which could aid its recovery down the road, said Brendan Cummings of the biological diversity center. Among possible strategies to rescue the mollusk are bans on scuba diving, relocation efforts to get white abalone closer together so they breed and captive breeding programs.

“It puts pressure on the agencies and opens funding to do recovery efforts and means it won’t be forgotten or ignored,” Cummings said. “Abalone once supported a productive, thriving fishery. Only with wise management can we restore the stocks.”