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Conservation Genetics of California Abalone: Developing Tools for Management

Abstract

The history of California’s abalone fisheries has become an object lesson in the potential for traditional fisheries management to fail in protecting species from over-harvesting and even the threat of extinction. Over the course of four decades, five species of abalone (red, green, pink, white and black) were sequentially exploited in California. Despite management efforts, based on minimum-size limits, landings of each species sequentially crashed. In 1997, after years of debate among fishing interests, managers and biologists on the severity, meaning and cure for the declines, the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) closed all commercial abalone fishing and relegated sport diving to the cold, rough waters of Northern California, where inaccessibility of the shoreline and prohibitions on using SCUBA gear have created defacto refugia for sexually mature abalones. On top of this, the only abalone species that can be recreationally harvested is the relatively abundant red abalone.

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