Officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) detained an individual for poaching abalone, the harvest of which has been banned on the state’s coast for almost three decades.
According to CDFW, officers observed a group of individuals with lights moving around Ocean Cove, picking up objects from the ground and placing them in containers. The officers hid and waited until the group returned to the access road, where they confronted them. In searching the group, officers discovered one individual had a bag of 15 red abalone. He was detained and transported to the Sonoma County Detention Facility, where he was booked for taking and possessing abalone with the intent to sell them.
“CDFW is working to protect the abalone population throughout California as the number of abalone dwindles. We have precious resources in our state, and we thank CDFW officers for protecting our environment, fish, and wildlife,” California Statewide Law Enforcement Association President Alan Barcelona said in a release.
A popular commercial fishery in the mid to late 20th century, California ultimately ended abalone harvesting in 1997 due to overfishing and a drastic decline in abundance. Regulators had closed some abalone fisheries even before that due to some variants – such as black abalone – declining to low levels because of fishing pressure and disease. Both white and black abalone are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Because they are difficult to harvest, abalone meat can sell for a high price, incentivizing poaching.
“Illegal harvest (poaching) of black abalone continues to be a problem, particularly along remote stretches of the central California coast where numbers of black abalone are relatively high,” NOAA Fisheries said. “Illegal harvest reduces black abalone abundance in the wild, further reducing the ability of populations to reproduce and sustain themselves over the long term.”
