An Aerial Hunt for Poachers of Black Abalone

SAN SIMEON — The radio crackles. A voice descends from the heavens, from all-seeing eyes in the sky.

"Three guys on the rocks just below the pier. One has a bucket. Can you handle?"

Copy that.

Lt. Jorge Gross, a state Fish and Game warden, swings his dark green pickup back onto California 1. Following directions from a warden in a plane overhead, he races off in pursuit of suspected abalone poachers.

California's central coast is prime poaching territory for black abalone for a good reason. It's one of the few places where there are any left.

A recent winter day seemed perfect for "rock-pickers," as abalone poachers are called.

The ocean has pulled far back; a minus tide exposed the abundant sea life clinging to the rocky shoreline. The late-afternoon sun is an orange blob, ready to be swallowed by the sea, making anyone on the rocks hard to see.

So Gross joined half a dozen other wardens racing along California 1 to locate poachers before darkness allows them to slip away unseen. The race never seems to end as wardens mount a desperate attempt to save the remnant population of a vanishing species.

Pity the lowly black abalone. For decades, it was dismissed as a trash shellfish more suitable for bait than a gastronomic treat. It is smaller and its flesh far tougher than its more delectable cousins: the red, white, green and pink abalone.

But when fishermen had picked the sea floor clean of other species, they turned their pry bars on black abalone, pulling them off rocks in the shallows where they live.

Black abalone that eluded harvesting were claimed by insidious bacteria that disrupt their digestive system so they wither and eventually die of starvation.

Biologists estimate that 99% of the millions of black abalone that once inhabited coastal waters off California are gone.

"Extinction rarely happens for any one reason," said Konstantin Karpov, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. "It usually takes cumulative impacts to knock an animal off the planet."

That's why he and other abalone experts worry. Poachers often think that their small harvest will make little difference, wardens say. Yet, the poachers' prey represent the few remaining black abalone likely to be resistant to the fatal withering syndrome. Their survival offers the only hope for the species.

Any poaching, as wardens like to say, is a recipe for disaster.