On a cool October day, the wind whipped around Nathaniel Fletcher as he bear-crawled his way along a rocky reef in the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve, a protected area on California’s central coast. He reached into cracks and peered into crevices with a flashlight, hoping to find an endangered marine snail whose shell recently has become California’s state seashell: the black abalone.
Seven species of abalone were once abundant along the California coast. Now, climate change and overfishing have driven all seven to the edge of extinction. The black abalone’s road to recovery is particularly challenging: Unlike other abalone species, researchers have not yet been able to grow it in captivity. But new efforts may give this iconic gastropod a fighting chance. A group of scientists have successfully translocated black abalone to Dangermond, boosting their numbers there, and Fletcher, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz who leads the field project, is working with scientists from The Nature Conservancy and NOAA to monitor the animals as they settle into their new habitat.
Black abalone have a ridged navy-and-black shell encasing a fleshy body with a muscular foot that they use to sucker onto rocks. Mature abalone can be up to 8 inches long, longer than the average human hand. But the black abalone’s most striking feature is typically hidden — the underside of its shell, which is a pearlescent, psychedelic array of greens and pinks. The snails reside in rocky intertidal zones, where they eat dead kelp and serve as food for other species, including sea otters.
The shellfish also contribute to coastal Native communities’ culture and cuisine. Eleanor Fishburn, chairwoman of the Barbareño Chumash Band of Indians, said that her ancestors ate smoked abalone meat and used their shells as tools, art and trade items. “As we move forward towards healing from the past, which includes the revitalization of cultural practices, the preservation of the black abalone is of vital importance to our natural environment,” Fishburn said.
Over the last century, commercial overfishing and poaching have devastated abalone populations. Since the 1850s, they have been fished both commercially and recreationally, though restrictions increased as their numbers dwindled, and in 1996, the fisheries closed statewide. In the 1980s and ’90s, a disease called withering syndrome, caused by the bacteria Candidatus xenohaliotis, further devastated abalone species in most of Southern California, with black abalone proving particularly susceptible. The pathogen attacks the mollusk’s digestive tract, causing it to shrivel away. The disease spread as far north as Big Sur, decimating populations by 95% in some areas, and in 2009, officials placed black abalone on the federal endangered species list. Today, it is illegal to harvest them.
Yet pockets of black abalone survived, including on the Channel Islands, though it’s not clear why. And now, these healthy populations are serving as donors to supplement other sites.
The Dangermond Preserve, located on the elbow of the California coast, just north of Point Conception, was an ideal site for the translocation efforts. The preserve, acquired by The Nature Conservancy in 2017, covers more than 24,000 acres of land, including 8 miles of the coast, and has patches of excellent abalone habitat. It is also one of the rare stretches of coastline that is relatively free from human disturbance.
The researchers translocated abalone to the preserve in spring and fall of 2023. The job required delicate, painstaking effort: They had to carefully pry the snails off rocks using an abalone iron, a chisel-like metal tool. They placed the snails in mesh bags and into coolers, then transferred them into tanks so they could weigh, measure, photograph and tag them. Finally, they tucked the transplants into nooks and crannies in the rocky intertidal zone at Dangermond. This process can be traumatic and potentially lethal for the abalone, and the researchers weren’t sure it would work. “If they’re cut, they can bleed out or get a secondary infection,” Fletcher said.
“As we move forward towards healing from the past, the preservation of the black abalone is of vital importance to our natural environment.”
But so far, the translocated creatures have been more resilient than expected. Monthly surveys revealed that by October 2024, about two-thirds of the abalone in 10 monitoring plots in Dangermond remained. And some of the rest have likely moved nearby: A larger survey conducted in fall 2023 found that the number in the overall region had increased five-fold. The population has also stabilized in the original translocation spots — a good sign, Fletcher said.
Steve Whitaker, a marine ecologist at Channel Islands National Park who was not involved in the translocation efforts, called the project a first step to abalone recovery, but added that whether the populations continue to grow remains an open question. “In order to spawn, they need to be in close proximity,” he said. “We have to just wait and see if we’re seeing recruitment.”
Fletcher and his team will continue to monitor the area every few months, hoping to find evidence that the abalone are reproducing. They’ll look for baby abalone, which swim freely as tiny, wormlike larvae. The translocations showed that the idea is certainly feasible, and the researchers plan to attempt it in other locations.
“Someday it would be nice to be able to go out and harvest not just black abalone,” Fishburn said, but other abalone species, too.
Florence Middleton is a photojournalist based in Oakland, California. A two-time Pulitzer Center fellow, her work focuses on the environment, community, women and culture.
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This article appeared in the February 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Back from the brink.”
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