18 http://www.earthislandjournal.orgI
HAVE ONLY HELD AN ABALONE ONCE. The giant marine
snail, plucked from the white laboratory tank to which it
was glued, gripped my hand as if holding onto the California
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in a galaxy of algae — its tentacles probing the above-water
world, its eyes moving about curiously in their tubular sockets.
After a few moments, its grip tightened, and the grooves on
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in the lines on my own hand. Soon, it felt like there was no
space left between us.
When I recall this experience months later, it is as if the
abalone is still in my hand, cool like seawater, but alive, and
pulsing, and holding me just as much as I was holding it. The
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For years, abalone have been in serious decline in
California. While abalone shells persist, molded into sidewalk
benches, nailed onto signposts, and laid on countless tribal
gravestones, the animals themselves — seven species of which
inhabit California waters — all continue to dwindle from their
kelp forest homes. This stark reality is the result of decades of
abalone overharvesting and climate disruption, the impacts
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When I held that living abalone, I felt more than just its
grip. I felt the fastening of myself to another being. For a
moment, I became a link between the stories of my species
and those of another.
Abalone stories span the entire length of human habita-
tion in California, and hold artists, surfers, scientists, water-
men, Native tribes, and countless other coastal cultures in
their breadth. Losing abalone would mean losing one of
California’s oldest and most widespread connections to the
natural world.
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against various ecological, technological, and cultural barri-
ers to recovery. But a cohort of researchers is pushing through
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or if their future is leaning inexorably toward extinction in
the wild.T
HE COMPLICATED HISTORy of abalone in California
requires a good deal of time to recount, says Dr.
Paul Dayton. His colleague at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography in San Diego, Dr. Ed Parnell, agrees, addingby Dominick Leskiw
HOLDING FAST,
OR FAILING?
THERE ARE DOZENS OF CONFOUNDING
ELEMENTS WORKING AGAINST
ABALONE RECOVERY ON THE CALIFORNIA COAST.
ILLUSTRATIONDOMINICK^ LESKIW