Starving Abalone? Another Closure?

Me and a friend went diving for abalone and got back to shore and realized we had 9 inch abs with the foot about size of a 4 inch abalone. I got home to clean it and it was the size of a scallop. This is what I found on CDFW Marine here is the link it explains it in detail.
https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/perfect-storm-decimates-kelp/

What do you other divers think? This just might close the coast for good or am I making to much out of this?

The kelp is coming back thick in spots and I have seen more star fish which apparently eat urchin so everything will fix by itself. 

If you see starving ones just go to a different spot.  I don't see that many like you mentioned but there are spots that have more. 

The dying ones are an easy meal for the cabezon.  If you want meatier abs just look for the ones that have a thick skirt. If you tap on it and it can't suck the whole skirt into the shell then it's a fatty and you should harvest it. 

There is no kelp only stalks with little urchins stuck all over them in the whole cove south of Timber Cove and there were abalone stuck on little rocks right next to the sandy beach where the waves break and no cover just a little rock and rest sand where abalone never go. 35 years abalone diving never seen anything like this.
I too feel that this could just be a cycle that we have not seen before and all will work out OK but I sure hope it turns around soon and does not get worse.
 

Yea its not looking too good, I talked to an urchin diver the other day who dove from the north point of point arena cove down to saunders reef and what he saw was mostly bad. Lots of weak abalone barely on the rocks and he said if one good wave storm comes through it is going to wipe them all out. Also not many big Urchin either. Hopefully things start to change for the better around here like DG is seeing further north!

FWIW, kelp in Monterey County is back in thick. Was wishing it wasn't so thick at times on Saturday.

 

 

Sincerely,

Jim

So Its thick in Monterey County now and not in Sonoma, isn't the water usually a little calmer and warmer in Monterey?
I wonder what Fisk Mill Cove looks like now I have not been there sense they closed it to diving the kelp there used to be so thick you could literally crawl on top of it till you found a clear hole to dive in. If I have time in the near future I will walk out to the point and see if its growing the same as it used to. Strange!

Just got back from Anchor Bay area. The kelp beds between AB and Point Arena looked pretty thick again. I saw a few bing cleaned in the campground, and some were fatties, some skinny. It seems to be very localized on South Mendo coast.

I've been amazed how little bull kelp there has been up north, upper Sonoma into Mendo.  But I know from constantly checking ocean swell forecasts, that this calendar year has been very unusually rough. Almost never days with under 3' swells and when you add in the fact that there have been months of added SW swell, which also is unusual, you have too much of a washing machine effect for the kelp to really bulk out like in the past.
I've seen plenty of places with the abs climbing the bull kelp stalks like in the report, but still think if we get a glorious "Indian summer" with 2' only NW swells, the kelp will rebound. Oh, and it would be great if everyone harvested urchins big time! I have to admit I'm not too big on the uni, but maybe we should at least remove a bunch on each dive. Someone told me busting them in the water only spreads them, but I'm not sure if that's true or not.
I did take one ab just under 10" that had a dinky body, but others have been quite solid as in the post. This is something we should all be checking and if we can help, doing whatever possible. Thanks for the post!

Very good analogy dirkbeachman about this years spring weather. It was a rough spring with large swells constantly showing up. As for the urchins I heard that too don't smash them it makes it worse. I know divers who smash the urchins to attract fish to shoot so apparently not such a good idea.
For those who like a visual I took a photo of the ab     

A note to the above picture that was the better one I tossed another one that was worse than that the meat was all mushy and sick.
Another problem with this is I see a nice abalone pry it off and look at the foot and its tiny your not supposed to put it back if its a legal size ab. Has anyone that dives for abalone ever put back a legal size ab? No....OK...
 

like DG said the kelp is coming back very quickly in the last few weeks so the abs will start gaining their meat back. try to dive away from urchins and in some vegetation when searching for abs. anything that's shy of  10 inches  I usualy tap the shell and see how much it sucks onto the rock, if the shell goes flat to the rock and you see no black just leave it. if you see some black be patient in slipping a bar underneath, sometimes I use two bars and really take my time to work it off.   since it is sucked on its a lot easier to gouge the meat.  also the lings have been coming into the shallows pretty thick in the last week.  just be patient with abs and eat more lingcod!.

Or, an even scarier thought, withering foot syndrome, while most prevalent in black ab, it does also infect red ab, and has been found in Norcal waters.

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/aah-saa/diseases-maladies/fwsab-eng.html

Lots of other good scientific data available google "withering foot syndrome"

Whoa- SRDave, I know you're not BS ing us- that's an incredibly small ab for the shell. The one dinky sized one I took wasn't that small relative to the shell, but definitely not normal.
Never heard of the withering disease, man we gotta get our oceans healthy again. I DO NOT want to be eating jellyfish in 20 years or whatever species triumphs if our incredible north coast ecology crashes!
BTW does anyone know the deal with busting urchins in the water? good idea or bad? Thanks

Ya I was stunned when I got to the beach I was in a hurry to snag some abs because I also like to spearfish so I was just not paying attention as the foot size I have never seen anything like this. I always pick a 8 3/4 to 9+ inch abs and never even think about meat they always had plenty of meat.
Years ago all the urchins disappeared when they allowed the commercial boys to pick-em and some well actually a lot of them took abalone too. Now the urchins are back but in some spots but way too overloaded.
If the kelp comes back before winter sets in that would be some relief to see. If not well I don't know....   

Save the kelp forests! We should be planting kelp and indroducing it to areas of favorable habitat. Maybe British Columbia has some wolf kelp they can introduce to balance nature? Gotta save those abalone! Maybe we can get BigJim to do a sally struthers commercial, good lord knows with just the price of a cup of coffee, you too can feed an abalone! Attach sponsor tags, and you will receive GoPro footage of your sponsored abalone. Every snail deserves to leave a trail.