Are abalone reproducing off the coast? A 3-year survey of Orange County tide pools may solve that mystery

Mike Couffer’s body floats with the motion of the ocean, his eyes peering through his face mask at the rocky tide pools beneath the chilly water’s surface.

He uses a flashlight to illuminate the rocks as he searches for something specific: abalone no bigger than a child’s palm.

“The question is not whether there are abalone, but if there’s baby abalone,” said the Corona del Mar wildlife biologist on a recent day in south Laguna Beach. “There’s big abalone up and down the coast, but are they breeding? And if they’re breeding, are we actually getting little baby abalone?”

Couffer’s investigation is part of a three-year tide pool survey, part of the Green Abalone Restoration Project by non-profit Get Inspired, aimed at finding out if the once-prolific shellfish is repopulating along the Orange County coastline. It’s an effort that requires searching below the saltwater surface of every tide pool from Corona del Mar to San Clemente.

“We are looking for baby abalone to provide evidence of successful reproduction in the wild population,” said the project’s organizer, Nancy Caruso.

The hunt for abalone

Abalone was once so plentiful, jumping on a surfboard and plucking a bag full off of rocks for dinner was a common pastime for ocean users who would hold feasts right on the sand.

But those days are long gone, after over-fishing and other environmental factors nearly wiped them out along the Orange County coast.

Seven different species once thrived in the waters off the state’s beaches. Shells dating back thousands of years were found at early Native American sites, used in trade for other goods.

Immigrants from Asia in the ’20s discovered the abalone and started harvesting them. It wasn’t long before abalone dishes began appearing on menus at restaurants and at local fish markets dotting the coast.

The shells, shiny and colorful on the inside, became a popular decor item used for ashtrays and soap dishes.

In the ’80s, a sabellid polychaete worm caused significant decline after it was introduced to California’s abalone farms from South Africa, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The worms, which live in tubes within the abalone shell, cause severe shell deformities making them prone to breakage and resulting in slow growth.

The combination of factors led Southern California fisheries to ban the catching of abalone in the ’90s.

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Couffer remembers the good old days, when he’d dive for abalone and make a meal of them.

“I use to be looking for the biggest ones,” Couffer said.

New territory

The ultimate goal of the Green Abalone Restoration Project is to grow 100,000 abalone in 10 years and to plant them along the Southern California coastline.

Caruso is working with schools and aquariums around the region to grow abalone. After five to seven years they’ll be put into the ocean with hopes of repopulation.

In the meantime, Caruso wants to know how many babies already exist in nature, and if the bigger ones are living close enough to one another to reproduce.

So she and a handful of volunteers are surveying Orange County tide pools.

“We’re literally laying on the reef with our faces in anywhere from three inches to three feet of water,” she said. “You have to wear full rubber so you don’t get cut up.”

More than 100 people have volunteered at the 31 tide pool sites surveyed.

“I want to find out where they like to live, data on where they like to be,” Caruso said. “It’s all new territory, no one really knows the answer to that question.”

Mostly, researchers come out of the water with no luck. But on a few occasions, they’ve found signs of hope.

“There’s two spots where I have found baby abalone … I can’t tell where they are,” Caruso said, not wanting to reveal the locations for fear of poachers or curious people seeking them out.

Along the way, there have been other interesting finds. Caruso found a snail at Thousand Steps Beach in Laguna that had never been documented before.

And there’s been a surprising number of starfish, which have suffered a major die-off due to a starfish-wasting disease all along the West Coast since 2013.

Near Victoria Beach in Laguna on a recent survey, Caruso counted 40 starfish, the most she’s seen since the disease decimated the species by the millions.

A slow process

The abalone survey is taking years to complete, in part because of nature. Researchers can only go out during the lowest tides of the year, which happen in winter and fall.

With each outing, they are racing against a clock with about a 30-minute window before the tide starts to rise again.

Then, there’s the challenge of this year’s wet winter. Caruso said she is careful not to put her volunteers in dirty runoff water after a storm.

On a recent day at Table Rock in Laguna Beach, a small group surveying an area raced rain clouds in the distance. They get lucky with the small swell, ideal for surveying, so they don’t get knocked around the rocks while doing underwater inspection.

Caruso called Couffer the “brave heart” of the group, the one who will search in the hardest to survey places.

On this day, he found an area wedged between two rock formations, where waves danced around like a washing machine. He found crevices in the rocks where he could wedge his feet, to keep still while searching.

“He’ll jump into the crazy water,” Caruso said. “He wears a bike helmet sometimes so his head doesn’t hit the rocks.”

Ron Pedley, of Huntington Beach, called out to Caruso to get a second opinion – a possible baby abalone. She scurried over the mussel-covered rocks, slipped her wetsuit over her head, tucked her hair into the rubber and placed her snorkel mask over her eyes and nose before dipping her face into the water.

She soon emerged, disappointed.

“It’s an oyster,” she said. “It has two sides, abalone only have one.”

It’s the unfortunate outcome of many of the surveys so far.

“But we never know,” she said, with hope in her voice. “That’s why we’re here.”