Abalone enthusiasts mark their return to Sonoma, Mendocino coasts

TIMBER COVE

Sean Park didn’t hesitate Friday when asked to rate his experience after braving the first leg of a 20-hour round trip from Southern California for a chance at a single hour in the ocean in pursuit of red abalone.

“Ten out of 10,” Park, 44, said definitively as he came ashore Friday with three freshly picked shellfish, then shambled in his wet suit back toward camp and the return journey to Los Angeles.

Like some kind of siren song, the opening days of abalone season hold a nearly irresistible allure to those for whom full immersion in the surf - with a snorkel, mask, fins and pry bar - is an exhilarating mark of being alive.

Tom Stone, a diver for four decades and owner of Sonoma Coast Divers in Rohnert Park, says each new season marks “the end of the dark period.”

Fortunately, for those who could hardly wait to get started, two days of fierce winds gave way Friday, providing calmer seas in protected inlets like the Timber Cove Boat Landing.

“I would dive for them even if you couldn’t eat them,” Napa financial adviser Jon Niebling confessed Friday as he geared up to enter the water, flanked by a buddy and another friend waiting onshore, sidelined by a recent surgery.

Steve Condie, a criminal appeals attorney from Danville, said he’d been watching and waiting for a break in the weather since the season opened Wednesday, needing a “fix” even though he just started abalone diving last year.

With its inclement environs, the sport demands more than mild devotion.

“Either you just find out that you really love it,” said Condie, 64, “or you have a saner mind and realize, ‘This is cold. This is wet. This is uncomfortable.’

“I just really love it,” he said.

The temptation provided by the delectable sea snails last year lured in at least 25,000 people who went through proper licensing, state Fish and Wildlife spokesman Andrew Hughan said. The hobby carries obvious risk, and last year at least four abalone divers died on the Mendocino Coast

Poaching also remains a significant problem for the fragile fishery.

Fish and Wildlife wardens from around the region are out in force during the first weekend in April each year, the traditional opening both for abalone season and recreational salmon fishing, which starts Saturday.

“We’ll bring in people from other counties to help out,” state Fish and Wildlife Capt. Steve Riske said.

Red abalone are the last of five abalone species that are still legal to fish off the California coast, but only in waters north of San Francisco Bay and only by recreational divers and pickers abiding by very specific guidelines. The catch must be a minimum of 7 inches in length, with a daily bag limit of three abalone, and a maximum take per person per season of 18 - only nine of which may be taken south of the Mendocino County line.

Abalone divers are prohibited from using scuba gear, so they have to be able to dive, locate individual abalone and pry them from the rocks while holding their breath, a taxing endeavor that is partly what makes it so gratifying, enthusiasts say.

Keith Blackwood, who came to the coast from Napa with Niebling on Friday, said the physical act of hunting, diving and capturing “food for the table” fulfills some kind of deep yearning.

“It’s a little Neanderthal,” he said with a grin.

Though fished north to the Oregon border, the vast majority of the more than 200,000 individual abalones collected each year are removed from coastal waters off Sonoma and, increasingly, Mendocino County, thanks to shifting rules that over recent years have diminished the opportunities for fishing and rock picking along the Sonoma Coast.

Tightened regulations were put in place since a 2011 “red tide” caused by a toxic algae bloom killed thousands of the tasty sea snails off the Sonoma Coast, contributing to a 60 percent decline in red abalone density found over a three-survey period that ended in 2012, according to the Fish and Wildlife Department. Density is a key measure of the abalone’s population health because they are broadcast spawners, and males and females must be in close proximity to breed effectively.

New rules introduced last year included limits on Sonoma Coast abalone, a later daily start time of 8 a.m., and closure of a popular swath of coastline around Fort Ross State Historic Park. Red abalone diving and rock picking also is permanently prohibited in the Stewarts Point State Marine Reserve, stretching roughly from southern Sea Ranch to Fisk Mill Cove in Salt Point State Park, as well as two smaller protected marine areas at Del Mar Landing and Gerstle Cove, state officials said.

Some divers have said they believe Fish and Wildlife paints a bleaker picture than exists, but many support the measures, as well as an overhaul now happening to change the way the fishery is managed for greater sustainability.

Some, like Condie, said they’re content to take fewer abalone on each visit to the coast to maximize the number of opportunities they have to dive.

Kyle Engelhorn, who is finishing his dissertation in physics at UC Berkeley but took a break to dive Friday, said feasting on abalone at the end of the day is definitely a reward, but so is the experience of being out in the waves - amid sea lions and seals, with the sun and birds above and, below, an underwater world that Niebling said on clear days “is like the Monterey Bay Aquarium.”

“The driving force is to be in the ocean,” said Condie. “The abalone is a bonus.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.