Empty abalony shells everywhere...2012

LOL

Voice of sanity....THANK YOU

Anthony

I think I agree with Alameda.  Sure there are signs of last years die off, but it still doesn't seem like the species is wiped out or even close to it.  I went last year a couple weeks after it happened, and in the 25'+ range, there were abalone EVERYWHERE.  I believe the deeper populations survived without any ill effects, and the deep populations make up the majority of the entire range.  It's too early to tell whether the die off will really effect the future of the species.  My guess is that it won't.  Thanks for the report, just had to include my two cents.

I dove Salt Point one week after the die off and before the closure of the area. At that time there was a lot of empty shells rolling around the bottom of the ocean.
It was pretty disturbing and I didn't harvest any abs that trip.

Since then I've dove at least 5 different spots North of Salt Point and found honey holes in each of them. Each spot was heavily populated with no signs of affects from the die off.

I don't think there is a need to throw up a red flag.

So to sum it up.........

What Alameda said!

Antonio

Cool heads everybody please. There has not been enough surveys done to draw a conclusions about the stock sizes over all. What I did fine interesting was someone was proposing a reduction to 12 abalone per year even before it was announced by the DFG. Which by the way was never even slightly hinted at the April 12th F&GC meeting in Eureka.