Helping to Turn the Tide in Favor of Abalone

When the tide goes out, the traffic along Highway 1 here slows to a crawl.

A uniformed warden approaches a pickup truck amid the procession of cars. He narrows his eyes and scrutinizes the occupants. Like any cop, he’s following his nose. But he’s not sniffing for alcohol-laced breath. Nor is he looking for drugs, or illegal weapons. He’s looking for contraband of a different kind: “Got any abalone?”

It’s an abalone roadblock, a checkpoint held by the state Department of Fish and Game that routinely stalls traffic here during low tides. That’s when thousands of recreational fishermen wade into the chilly waters off the North Coast of California in pursuit of the delectable ear-shaped mollusks.

The North Coast is the last place in California that has any abalone left, as the rest of the state’s coastal waters were pretty much picked clean a decade ago. The North Coast is also the one place where abalone harvesting is legal, although tightly controlled.

No commercial harvesting is permitted, and sports divers and recreational fishermen are allowed only three abalone per outing. Each licensed fisherman is limited to 24 abalone a year.

These rock pickers, as abalone divers call themselves, cannot use knives or hooks to snag their prey. Instead, they must use a prescribed pry-bar with no sharp edges that could cut the abalone’s foot while pulling it off the rock.

That way, if a harvested abalone is determined to be smaller than the minimum allowable size of 7 inches, it can be put back on the rock and have a chance to survive. (An abalone can easily bleed to death from a cut because its blood cannot coagulate.)

Nor can the rock pickers use scuba gear. Without artificial breathing devices, few divers can reach deeper than 30 feet to locate abalone and pry them off rocks. Most hunt for abalone in waters shallower than 15 feet.

“By not allowing commercial harvesting or scuba gear, we have set up a de facto refuge by depth,” said Konstantin Karpov, Fish and Game biologist. The deeper-dwelling abalone produce offspring that help replenish the shellfish in the shallower waters.

At least that’s the theory. Fish and Game expects 36,000 licensed sports fishermen to collect about 400,000 abalone this year. “The stocks should be sustainable at this level of fishing,” Karpov said.

It should be a sustainable fishery, he said, unless abalone suffer at the hands of poachers. Fish and Game officials estimate that 100,000 to 150,000 abalone are taken illegally each year, including the breeding stock in deeper waters. So an undercover team regularly holds stake-outs for poaching rings that sell abalone on the black market for $80 to $100 apiece.

Meanwhile, uniformed wardens like to keep a high profile on the North Coast, particularly on weekends with low tides during the abalone season that stretches from April through November, except for July.

Motorists stopped at the checkpoint who acknowledge possessing abalone -- and some who do not -- get directed off Highway 1 into a parking lot for a check of their catch and their fishing licenses.

“I lost my wallet,” explains one rock picker from Forestville, Calif. “Honest. I lost my license, my driver’s license, credit cards, money, everything.” He pleads with the uniformed warden to give him a break.

Warden Ed Ramos looks him over, shifting his eyes between the fellow’s Grateful Dead T-shirt and his sack full of enormous abalone.

“I’m sorry, my hands are tied,” Ramos tells him, flipping open his citation book. “It’s illegal possession.”

But Ramos promises to tear up the ticket if the fellow returns to the roadblock later in the day with his fishing license.

“You hear every story,” Ramos said later. “I hear that every week. ‘Oh, I forgot my license.’ Or ‘I lost it.’ ”

Surprisingly, most of those pulled over voice no complaints -- even when out of earshot of the law.

“They are doing their job, keeping everyone honest,” said Ken Lee, who left San Francisco with some friends at 3:30 a.m. to snag his daily limit of abalone. “We always play by the rules. There’s no use in fooling around.”

Alan Neal of San Rafael hopes vigilant law enforcement will forestall what happened south of San Francisco, where a decline in abalone resulted in an outright ban on harvesting.

“I’m really happy to see this here,” Neal said. “People are poaching up here, taking 50 or 60 abalone. If they crack down, guys like us have a chance to get some abs.”

To hear some tell it, the urge to join in the seasonal abalone hunt is akin to looking for love. A number of the rock pickers swear that abalone has aphrodisiac powers -- Viagra in a shell.

“In Chinese custom, you cook it with soup and you eat it and you keep the wife happy all night long,” said Kai Lau, who left his home in Santa Rosa to splash around in the 49-degree water in search of abalone. “It makes you strong.”

During the morning checkpoint, wardens questioned 500 people, checked 200 cars and issued 23 citations as well as a slew of warnings. They also seized two dozen abalone, a string of undersized rockfish and a bucket of other illegally taken mollusks.

“It seems that we’re seeing a trend,” Capt. Dennis Davenport told an assembly of 15 wardens as they tallied up the day’s catch. Citations continue to drop, down from an average of 60 a year earlier.

“We’re not catching the real hard-core poachers,” he said. “But the regular fisherman is sticking to the rules.”