Friday, December 22, 2006
Did Divers Drive the Black Abalone to Brink of Extinction?
The Center for Biological Diversity formally petitioned the Federal government to protect the black abalone under the Endangered Species Act. If the species is listed, it will enjoy that dubious distinction with the white abalone. The petition describes in a few short sentences the precipitous decline of the abalone along the Southern California coast and Channel Islands. The petition cites commercial and recreational overharvesting and disease as primary factors in the decline with warming ocean temperatures cited as a contributing factor among others. The petition relates that starting in 1985, dead and dying abalone were observed at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Island. Withering syndrome caused by bacteria results in tissue atrophy. An infected abalone is unable to hold onto the hard substrate and eventually dies. The document describes the spread of the disease which resulted in the disappearance of 99 percent of the population of black abalone from Anacapa Island and other locations.
I started frequently diving at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Island in the mid-1980s. In the shallows and intertidal areas, black abalones crowded about stacking on top of each other. Pink and red abalones were abundant in deeper water and occasionally a diver would find a rare white abalone approaching the edge of the sport diving depth limit. The desirability of the abalone as a food was directly proportional to its depth. Black abalones were the most abundant and easiest to find and take. They were the least desirable species because their tissue was tough with the consistency (and taste some would argue) of old shoe leather. All abalone steaks need to be tenderized using an “ab hammer” fashioned from wood or metal. One diver I knew swore that the edge of the bottom of a 12-ounce Coke bottle worked equally as well. Many of us believed the easiest and only way to tenderize a black ab steak was to run steamroller across it a few times and as a result we took very few if any, especially when other species were relatively plentiful. My favorite recipe was to coat the ab steak in Italian bread crumbs, stuff it with Monterey jack cheese and avocado and lightly fry the entire concoction.
Within a couple of years I noticed that the black abs were disappearing and that there seemed to be a lot of black ab shells in the shallows. About the same time I began to hear of an mysterious ailment that was working its way through many abalone species, not just the black abs. Called the “withering foot syndrome” there were several competing hypotheses as to its cause—warm water from the El Nino events which were just becoming to be understood at that time; some kind of a parasite; pollution from offshore oil development; bacteria from run off; or a cyclic event in the little understood natural history of the species. Many scientists at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara worked on the problem. I would hear about it in Friday afternoon get-togethers sponsored by various labs at MSI. The cause was also the subject of endless speculation among graduate students and undergraduate marine biology majors, many of whom I dived with as part of the UCSB Dive Club. Also, my best friend worked in one of the labs and we would talk about this and other trends as we traversed the southern Santa Barbara County coastline in search of new dive spots. One-by-one the possible causes of the syndrome were eliminated through solid scientific research.
I am a bit surprised that the CBD petition lists recreational take as one of the contributing factors to the abalone’s demise. That is not my experience. We took what we needed for immediate consumption, seldom taking the limit, and almost never taking blacks for the reasons cited above. But then I recall a statement by Howard Hall. “For many years I've been calling this phenomenon, the ten year syndrome. Specifically a diver's first dive in an environment becomes his baseline. Ten years later, the environment seems "dived out," a term used by divers to punish themselves for environmental degradation they largely had nothing to do with, but being ignorant of other causes, blame the degradation on the impact of divers.”
I started frequently diving at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Island in the mid-1980s. In the shallows and intertidal areas, black abalones crowded about stacking on top of each other. Pink and red abalones were abundant in deeper water and occasionally a diver would find a rare white abalone approaching the edge of the sport diving depth limit. The desirability of the abalone as a food was directly proportional to its depth. Black abalones were the most abundant and easiest to find and take. They were the least desirable species because their tissue was tough with the consistency (and taste some would argue) of old shoe leather. All abalone steaks need to be tenderized using an “ab hammer” fashioned from wood or metal. One diver I knew swore that the edge of the bottom of a 12-ounce Coke bottle worked equally as well. Many of us believed the easiest and only way to tenderize a black ab steak was to run steamroller across it a few times and as a result we took very few if any, especially when other species were relatively plentiful. My favorite recipe was to coat the ab steak in Italian bread crumbs, stuff it with Monterey jack cheese and avocado and lightly fry the entire concoction.
Within a couple of years I noticed that the black abs were disappearing and that there seemed to be a lot of black ab shells in the shallows. About the same time I began to hear of an mysterious ailment that was working its way through many abalone species, not just the black abs. Called the “withering foot syndrome” there were several competing hypotheses as to its cause—warm water from the El Nino events which were just becoming to be understood at that time; some kind of a parasite; pollution from offshore oil development; bacteria from run off; or a cyclic event in the little understood natural history of the species. Many scientists at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara worked on the problem. I would hear about it in Friday afternoon get-togethers sponsored by various labs at MSI. The cause was also the subject of endless speculation among graduate students and undergraduate marine biology majors, many of whom I dived with as part of the UCSB Dive Club. Also, my best friend worked in one of the labs and we would talk about this and other trends as we traversed the southern Santa Barbara County coastline in search of new dive spots. One-by-one the possible causes of the syndrome were eliminated through solid scientific research.
I am a bit surprised that the CBD petition lists recreational take as one of the contributing factors to the abalone’s demise. That is not my experience. We took what we needed for immediate consumption, seldom taking the limit, and almost never taking blacks for the reasons cited above. But then I recall a statement by Howard Hall. “For many years I've been calling this phenomenon, the ten year syndrome. Specifically a diver's first dive in an environment becomes his baseline. Ten years later, the environment seems "dived out," a term used by divers to punish themselves for environmental degradation they largely had nothing to do with, but being ignorant of other causes, blame the degradation on the impact of divers.”
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Need for a new ocean stewardship…ours.
Recently, I learned of a campaign among Southern California divers to return very large lobsters, known as “monster bugs,” to the ocean after capture. A poster showing two very happy divers holding up extremely large lobsters advocating a catch and release ethic is circulating with the advice “IF you need to bring one up to prove you caught it, take a picture and then put it back into the ocean carefully. That will impress your friends far more than eating it!”
When I first saw this poster on line, I thought it was someone’s idea of a real bad joke. Incredibly, I found that it was not a joke. People are quite serious about this point. Somehow, they have deluded themselves that “catch and release” is somehow ennobling when it really amounts to stressing an animal for no reason other than ego gratification.
Let me state that I have no problem with sport divers, or commercial fishers, capturing and consuming lobster. Granted, scuba makes the taking of these critters less “sporting” than say, if one was breath-hold diving. I abhor poaching, taking of short lobster, diver who take more than their legal limit and distribute the excess to those less fortunate and those who do not consume what they capture.
The problem with “catch and release” of these lobster is that it dignifies what really amounts to “take and torture” removing the lobster from its water environment and placing it into an air environment. The suggestion to take pictures before magnanimously sparing its life seems a bit hideous. I am not sure what constitutes “putting it back into the ocean carefully.” It sounds like a euphemism for “after you take its picture, toss it over the side.” I have observed sheepshead trying to take a bite out of a lobster being held by a diver on the bottom at Anacapa Island. Tossing a lobster back into the water from the surface to let it fend for itself until it hits the bottom and finds a hiding place seems kind of cruel. If you are going to capture it, eat it, if you are not going to eat it, leave it alone. If you need to impress your friends with a picture of the lobster, I would suggest that either they or you need to find new friends.
In the book, Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness, author David Helvarg concludes “…an end to conflict of interest in our fisheries is not likely to be implemented until far more Americans who say they love the ocean decide to take more responsibility for its stewardship.” I am not quite sure that “take and torture” is the kind of more responsible stewardship he has in mind. What the advocates of “take and torture” suggest is a malignant mutation of the old saying “take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”
When I first saw this poster on line, I thought it was someone’s idea of a real bad joke. Incredibly, I found that it was not a joke. People are quite serious about this point. Somehow, they have deluded themselves that “catch and release” is somehow ennobling when it really amounts to stressing an animal for no reason other than ego gratification.
Let me state that I have no problem with sport divers, or commercial fishers, capturing and consuming lobster. Granted, scuba makes the taking of these critters less “sporting” than say, if one was breath-hold diving. I abhor poaching, taking of short lobster, diver who take more than their legal limit and distribute the excess to those less fortunate and those who do not consume what they capture.
The problem with “catch and release” of these lobster is that it dignifies what really amounts to “take and torture” removing the lobster from its water environment and placing it into an air environment. The suggestion to take pictures before magnanimously sparing its life seems a bit hideous. I am not sure what constitutes “putting it back into the ocean carefully.” It sounds like a euphemism for “after you take its picture, toss it over the side.” I have observed sheepshead trying to take a bite out of a lobster being held by a diver on the bottom at Anacapa Island. Tossing a lobster back into the water from the surface to let it fend for itself until it hits the bottom and finds a hiding place seems kind of cruel. If you are going to capture it, eat it, if you are not going to eat it, leave it alone. If you need to impress your friends with a picture of the lobster, I would suggest that either they or you need to find new friends.
In the book, Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness, author David Helvarg concludes “…an end to conflict of interest in our fisheries is not likely to be implemented until far more Americans who say they love the ocean decide to take more responsibility for its stewardship.” I am not quite sure that “take and torture” is the kind of more responsible stewardship he has in mind. What the advocates of “take and torture” suggest is a malignant mutation of the old saying “take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”
