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May. 11th, 2005 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafishWow, PH gets quoted the New York Times! He said his cousin, a doctor back east, called to tell him about it. He had no idea.
Every year there is some sort of undercover sting operation that catches a new ring of abalone poachers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/national/10abalone.html
Risking Life, Waistline and Freedom for Abalone
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Terry Roloff walking across slippery rocks at Point Arena, Calif., with his gear and a rare culinary prize of three (the limit) mouthwatering abalone.
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
Published: May 10, 2005
POINT ARENA, Calif. - The middle-aged hunter-gatherers in wet suits emerge at this time of year on days of exceptionally low tides. Bearing iron tools, inner tubes and fierce determination, they clamber down rocks as slippery as wet spinach to plunge headfirst into frigid northern waters.
Pete Swinney reached for a third abalone as his son Bradley, 4 1/2, watched at Port Arena, Calif.
They abandon caution in pursuit of the foot of an elusive gastropod - the wild abalone - a rare culinary treasure that cannot be sold legally and is unobtainable at restaurants or fish markets. These hunters, mostly men, are proof that there is nothing some Californians will not do for a good meal.
Though scallop-size farmed abalone is sold commercially, the full-bodied wild red variety is coveted for its size, thickness and delicate flavor, a melt-in-your-mouth, more subtle version of calamari. The only way to obtain it is the hard way: searching treacherous ledges along the shore or diving into the waters north of San Francisco. Call it extreme cuisine.
With a snorkel occasionally emitting water like a moving Hawaiian blowhole, David Berke, 61, a cardiologist from Fremont, braved cold waves and tangled beds of kelp to stalk and eventually dine on a corpulent mollusk that in its habitat "looks like a rock with three holes on the top," he said.
It is a risky pursuit. Abalone-related drownings average two to five a year in Sonoma County alone, said Sgt. Eric Thompson, director of the county's helicopter rescue unit. On the last Sunday in April, his unit flew in to rescue a 48-year-old diver with chest pains at the foot of a 100-foot cliff. The typical victim, Sergeant Thompson said, is 50-something and overweight and runs into trouble because of overexertion, encountering "sneaker waves," or hyperventilating or panicking in thick kelp.
"It's definitely a rugged-outdoorsman type of activity," the sergeant said. "It's not Malibu."
The most shocking death occurred last year, when Randall Fry, a sport-fishing advocate and an experienced diver, was attacked and killed by what was believed to be a great white shark near Fort Bragg, Calif.
As trout are to the Beaverkill, and bonefish are to the flats of Islamorada, abalone are to these isolated and often tempestuous waters off Northern California. A moratorium was placed on harvesting abalone south of San Francisco in 1997 because of overfishing, disease and other concerns.
Since then, eager gourmands - for whom "abs" are not something to be worked out at the gym - travel from distant places like Bakersfield and San Diego to the 200-plus-mile stretch of coast in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. On low-tide weekends for seven months of the year beginning April 1, long lines of cars park along the cliffs of Highway 1.
Abalone hunters are required by law to free-dive without an artificial breathing apparatus, holding their breath as they plunge into the current to jimmy a camouflaged shell off a rock. To protect the species, the state strictly limits the take. Divers are permitted only three abalone a day and only 24 a year, far more stringent than the limit of 100 four years ago.
As abalone habitat shrinks worldwide, mainly because of overfishing, pollution and a disease known as withering syndrome, which causes the foot muscle to shrink away from the shell and prevents it from clamping onto rocks, the unspoiled waters of Northern California have become "probably the best abalone fishery in the world," said Peter Haaker, a senior marine biologist with the State Department of Fish and Game.
Conservation is a pressing issue, biologists say, because abalone are easily overfished. They are long-lived, reaching ages of 30 years or more, and are vulnerable to injuries. Because they are "broadcast spawners," exuding eggs into the water, they need high densities to reproduce. Limiting the sport to skin divers creates a refuge for abalone in deeper water.
But these waters are a prime area for unscrupulous and increasingly brazen poachers, who sell wild abalone on the black market and whose numbers, local law enforcement officials say, are increasing every year.
This year, a Chinese restaurant worker, Yiting Zhu, 44, was sentenced to three years probation and fined $5,000 for taking abalone in a state park south of San Francisco. After seeing him in a wet suit at sunset, wardens discovered a backpack containing a bound stack of business cards for restaurants and markets.
That was relatively tame. Last year, in the largest abalone enforcement action yet recorded, fish and game wardens in Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County, acted on a tip from local fishermen and followed two commercial urchin fishermen, who typically use air compressors and hoses to dive 50 feet or more. They tracked the two to a local campground where, in the fish hold of the boat, they discovered 468 red abalone.
Abalone poaching can be profitable. Abalone sold illegally on the black market to sushi chefs, restaurants and seafood dealers can fetch $50 to $60 an animal, said Capt. Tony Warrington, who oversees the special operations unit for the California Department of Fish and Game, which investigates poachers and issues "report cards" to be punched by divers after every catch.
The two urchin fishermen were convicted of conspiracy to take abalone for commercial purposes, a felony, and sentenced to two years in state prison each. They were also fined $40,000 each, banned from commercial fishing for life and had their vessels and equipment confiscated.
"We take a dim view of the theft or deterioration of our natural resources by criminals," said Mark Kalina, a deputy district attorney for Mendocino County.
In recent years, state officials and prosecutors in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, where 96 percent of abalone are caught, have begun issuing stiffer penalties.
As a result, Captain Warrington said, thieves have become wilier, loading a van with six people, for instance, who dive for the legal daily limit. "You figure a guy who just takes the limit could take in about 200 bucks in a day," he said.
Enforcement is difficult, he said, with more than 200 miles of craggy coast patrolled by just 10 fish and game wardens. Concerned divers are organizing, and one citizens group offers up to $1,000 for tips leading to convictions of poachers.
The prospect of dining on wild abalone, with a tender texture made more-so by whacking the hapless foot muscle with a plank, can lead grownups with steady jobs to rash acts of derring-do.
David Cooper, a 54-year-old newspaper truck driver, and Dianna Friend, 62, who works at a local Trader Joe's, drove one recent weekend from San Leandro, for the pleasure of holding their breath while swimming upside down toward crevices straight out of "Creature From the Black Lagoon," only to drive home, cook, eat and return the next day, some 600 miles.
Every abber has a favorite recipe, the old standby being morsels dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and then deep fried. Like his wet-suited and wader-wearing brethren, Thuy Le, 47, a machine operator from Santa Rosa, knows that the sweet allure of the dinner plate runs deep.
"We don't gamble," he said. "We don't play golf. This is our sport: good food."
Every year there is some sort of undercover sting operation that catches a new ring of abalone poachers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/national/10abalone.html
Risking Life, Waistline and Freedom for Abalone
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Terry Roloff walking across slippery rocks at Point Arena, Calif., with his gear and a rare culinary prize of three (the limit) mouthwatering abalone.
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
Published: May 10, 2005
POINT ARENA, Calif. - The middle-aged hunter-gatherers in wet suits emerge at this time of year on days of exceptionally low tides. Bearing iron tools, inner tubes and fierce determination, they clamber down rocks as slippery as wet spinach to plunge headfirst into frigid northern waters.
Pete Swinney reached for a third abalone as his son Bradley, 4 1/2, watched at Port Arena, Calif.
They abandon caution in pursuit of the foot of an elusive gastropod - the wild abalone - a rare culinary treasure that cannot be sold legally and is unobtainable at restaurants or fish markets. These hunters, mostly men, are proof that there is nothing some Californians will not do for a good meal.
Though scallop-size farmed abalone is sold commercially, the full-bodied wild red variety is coveted for its size, thickness and delicate flavor, a melt-in-your-mouth, more subtle version of calamari. The only way to obtain it is the hard way: searching treacherous ledges along the shore or diving into the waters north of San Francisco. Call it extreme cuisine.
With a snorkel occasionally emitting water like a moving Hawaiian blowhole, David Berke, 61, a cardiologist from Fremont, braved cold waves and tangled beds of kelp to stalk and eventually dine on a corpulent mollusk that in its habitat "looks like a rock with three holes on the top," he said.
It is a risky pursuit. Abalone-related drownings average two to five a year in Sonoma County alone, said Sgt. Eric Thompson, director of the county's helicopter rescue unit. On the last Sunday in April, his unit flew in to rescue a 48-year-old diver with chest pains at the foot of a 100-foot cliff. The typical victim, Sergeant Thompson said, is 50-something and overweight and runs into trouble because of overexertion, encountering "sneaker waves," or hyperventilating or panicking in thick kelp.
"It's definitely a rugged-outdoorsman type of activity," the sergeant said. "It's not Malibu."
The most shocking death occurred last year, when Randall Fry, a sport-fishing advocate and an experienced diver, was attacked and killed by what was believed to be a great white shark near Fort Bragg, Calif.
As trout are to the Beaverkill, and bonefish are to the flats of Islamorada, abalone are to these isolated and often tempestuous waters off Northern California. A moratorium was placed on harvesting abalone south of San Francisco in 1997 because of overfishing, disease and other concerns.
Since then, eager gourmands - for whom "abs" are not something to be worked out at the gym - travel from distant places like Bakersfield and San Diego to the 200-plus-mile stretch of coast in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. On low-tide weekends for seven months of the year beginning April 1, long lines of cars park along the cliffs of Highway 1.
Abalone hunters are required by law to free-dive without an artificial breathing apparatus, holding their breath as they plunge into the current to jimmy a camouflaged shell off a rock. To protect the species, the state strictly limits the take. Divers are permitted only three abalone a day and only 24 a year, far more stringent than the limit of 100 four years ago.
As abalone habitat shrinks worldwide, mainly because of overfishing, pollution and a disease known as withering syndrome, which causes the foot muscle to shrink away from the shell and prevents it from clamping onto rocks, the unspoiled waters of Northern California have become "probably the best abalone fishery in the world," said Peter Haaker, a senior marine biologist with the State Department of Fish and Game.
Conservation is a pressing issue, biologists say, because abalone are easily overfished. They are long-lived, reaching ages of 30 years or more, and are vulnerable to injuries. Because they are "broadcast spawners," exuding eggs into the water, they need high densities to reproduce. Limiting the sport to skin divers creates a refuge for abalone in deeper water.
But these waters are a prime area for unscrupulous and increasingly brazen poachers, who sell wild abalone on the black market and whose numbers, local law enforcement officials say, are increasing every year.
This year, a Chinese restaurant worker, Yiting Zhu, 44, was sentenced to three years probation and fined $5,000 for taking abalone in a state park south of San Francisco. After seeing him in a wet suit at sunset, wardens discovered a backpack containing a bound stack of business cards for restaurants and markets.
That was relatively tame. Last year, in the largest abalone enforcement action yet recorded, fish and game wardens in Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County, acted on a tip from local fishermen and followed two commercial urchin fishermen, who typically use air compressors and hoses to dive 50 feet or more. They tracked the two to a local campground where, in the fish hold of the boat, they discovered 468 red abalone.
Abalone poaching can be profitable. Abalone sold illegally on the black market to sushi chefs, restaurants and seafood dealers can fetch $50 to $60 an animal, said Capt. Tony Warrington, who oversees the special operations unit for the California Department of Fish and Game, which investigates poachers and issues "report cards" to be punched by divers after every catch.
The two urchin fishermen were convicted of conspiracy to take abalone for commercial purposes, a felony, and sentenced to two years in state prison each. They were also fined $40,000 each, banned from commercial fishing for life and had their vessels and equipment confiscated.
"We take a dim view of the theft or deterioration of our natural resources by criminals," said Mark Kalina, a deputy district attorney for Mendocino County.
In recent years, state officials and prosecutors in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, where 96 percent of abalone are caught, have begun issuing stiffer penalties.
As a result, Captain Warrington said, thieves have become wilier, loading a van with six people, for instance, who dive for the legal daily limit. "You figure a guy who just takes the limit could take in about 200 bucks in a day," he said.
Enforcement is difficult, he said, with more than 200 miles of craggy coast patrolled by just 10 fish and game wardens. Concerned divers are organizing, and one citizens group offers up to $1,000 for tips leading to convictions of poachers.
The prospect of dining on wild abalone, with a tender texture made more-so by whacking the hapless foot muscle with a plank, can lead grownups with steady jobs to rash acts of derring-do.
David Cooper, a 54-year-old newspaper truck driver, and Dianna Friend, 62, who works at a local Trader Joe's, drove one recent weekend from San Leandro, for the pleasure of holding their breath while swimming upside down toward crevices straight out of "Creature From the Black Lagoon," only to drive home, cook, eat and return the next day, some 600 miles.
Every abber has a favorite recipe, the old standby being morsels dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and then deep fried. Like his wet-suited and wader-wearing brethren, Thuy Le, 47, a machine operator from Santa Rosa, knows that the sweet allure of the dinner plate runs deep.
"We don't gamble," he said. "We don't play golf. This is our sport: good food."
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 09:54 pm (UTC)PH was pretty instrumental in getting whites declared an endangered species.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 03:34 am (UTC)