Abalone

Frank had all the contact info from that meeting in his back pack and it was stolen.  You can reconnect with him at (408)394-1885
Thanks, Joshua B! I wondered what happened.

Brandi,  The calipers are a very goos tool, and they were also not expensive to make, a real bonus! The user inserts a 1.25" by maybe 12" mylar strip into the handle and dives. The follow a transect and gauge every ab they find. While the calipers are in place, they push a little button, and the calipers punch a mark into the tape indicating the measurement. After each couple dozen abs (I don't recall the actual number, but it was enough to be useful) the user replaces the tape and stores the punched tape. When the transect is done, the tapes are fed into a machine that tallies the number and length of each ab. Real simple population data.  There was also talk of changing the transect system so as to include all findable abs on the transect, not just the ones on top of rocks as is done now. It seems most abs found on top of rocks are in a spawning mode for broadcasting their gametes; this leaves out all the immature abs, and therefore data on upcoming generations. After that it all gets complicated...

Another issue raised was that the new 8AM regs discriminate against rock pickers. Most of the really good minus tides are between sunrise and 8 AM. There was an issue raised about a possible ADA violation as this discriminates against those of us whop cannot dive due to physical disability, including folks like me with damaged ears. I asked the woman who runs the Marine District newsletter about the reasons, and was told the wardens wanted it because of the difficulty of monitoring divers before 8 AM. I called BS on that having talked to the wardens on the South Mendocino area who said they had no problems with getting up early top catch ab poachers.

Agani, thank you very much for the information and getting this thread going!

Dan

Dan, you do realize that I'm the guy that gave that presentation and designed/manufactured those calipers right?

Video from the Fish & Game Commission meeting 10/19. As a side note, here is a video of a brief discussion of preliminary abalone survey results and possible need for regulatory action by Dr. Craig Shuman.

He is setting the stage for the reduction. Go to the 2:14 marker.

http://www.cal-span.org/cgi-bin/arch...layer=jwplayer

Dan, you do realize that I'm the guy that gave that presentation and designed/manufactured those calipers right?

Actually I did not realize that. Thanks for the response as well as making the cool tools!

;-D