Braving rough seas for taste of abalone
On a recent overcast morning, a small crew of hunters slipped into the chilly waters off the Sonoma County coast. Swimming from a placid cove, the seven men made their way around a swell that crashed into the imposing rocky shore of Salt Point State Park.
Armed with the tools of the trade — wet suits, weight belts, flippers, pry irons — the divers scanned underwater for their elusive prey: the red abalone.
These were mostly first-timers to the alluring yet risky pastime, so they took to the ocean with two teachers, Tom Stone and Al Nulty of
Sonoma Coast Divers in Santa Rosa. They came not only to learn how to hunt and comply with the state’s strict abalone laws, but how to overcome the perils of the sport.
As everyone in the group knew, four abalone hunters had perished off the coast of Northern California since the beginning of April, including three friends in Mendocino County. It was a grim start to a season often marred by fatal mishaps.
“Not everybody wants to risk their life to go get a snail, but they’re out there,” Nulty had said to his students when they yanked on their flippers and adjusted their dive masks before trudging into the cove.
Every year several people die in the waters off the coast of Sonoma and Mendocino counties while seeking the coveted creatures. The red abalone, whose numbers have plummeted in recent decades in part because of overfishing, is the biggest of the world’s abalone, and its meat is considered a delicacy, often compared to calamari.
Divers are limited to three abalone at a time, and can take only nine of the season’s 18-abalone limit in Sonoma County. The strict fishing regulations, while tested by poachers, have helped the species survive.
“It’s important to enforce the laws so we can have abalone down the road,” said State Park Ranger Sean Lia, an avid abalone diver on patrol along the coastline. “We want to make sure people are safe, but we’re watching to make sure no laws are broken.”
Diving deep
Before taking his students into the water, Nulty spent two hours teaching them from the beach, an abalone hot spot about 17 miles north of Jenner. At places like this, hunters commonly gather during the April-to-November season.
Central to the pastime is the dive. Using air tanks is illegal, so those in search of abalone must take a big breath before swimming down, sometimes more than 30 feet, to pry the animals off rocks near the ocean bottom.
Yongrim Rhee, a software engineer from San Francisco who surfs regularly at Ocean Beach, was taking the class to improve the time he can hold his breath — and to get a deeper knowledge of the ocean.
“I’m a little nervous, but mostly excited,” he said before going in.
“If I don’t get any abalone, so be it,” said Napa resident Sebastian Erggelet, who was free-diving for the first time. “If there is a harvest, then I’ll have something to grill tonight.”
He turned to Rick Bobus, a Santa Rosa resident who had tagged along with the crew: “Any tips from the veteran?”
“You don’t need to get your iron all the way under (the abalone),” Bobus answered, referring to the pry tool. “Just 1 inch, and pop it off, because they suck down and it will be too late.”
Nulty and Stone teach their students to study the ocean. At first glance, the water may seem calm, but 15 minutes later, they warned, sets of large waves may come crashing to shore.
“Where we usually go the swells are a little high,” Nulty explained to the students. “They’re a little bit rough, so we’re entering through the cove. This makes us kick a little more, but it’s much safer.”
Perhaps the most critical technique the instructors imparted to their class was called “one up, one down” — a buddy system in which one diver plunges while the other man stays afloat, ready to call for help or render aid should anything go wrong.
Hazardous surf
And plenty can go wrong. On April 12, 49-year-old Dublin resident Tae Won Oh was on a weekend excursion diving for abalone with friends in Caspar Cove off the Mendocino coast when disaster struck. Oh and two others drowned in the choppy waters, while two survivors were found uninjured on rocks on the south end of the cove.
Witnesses described rough and dangerous conditions that day, and the Coast Guard had warned of hazardous surf leading into the weekend.
Nine days later, 52-year-old abalone hunter Joel Falcon of El Cerrito died when he fell from a 75-foot cliff he had climbed after becoming trapped by the rising tide in a cove near Westport in Mendocino County.
“I think overconfidence plays a big role in diving fatalities,” said Nate Buck, a lifeguard for the California Department of Parks and Recreation who was on patrol at Salt Point State Park. “A lot of people think they are really experienced, but may only come once or twice a year.”
The weekend of the Caspar Cove deaths, Buck said, five people were rescued from the water around Salt Point.
Buck, an abalone diver himself, said fatalities happen even when ocean conditions are good. That’s because so many things can go wrong when free-diving — such as tangled equipment, diver panic or fatigue. Most drowning victims still have their weight belts on, he said.
“I surf big waves, fish and swim — I do a lot of things in the ocean,” Buck said. “When I go free-diving out here, it’s the most dangerous thing I do.”
The most experienced divers, though, know when conditions are too dicey. It’s often the overly determined folks, sometimes coming from farther away, that will flout obvious dangers — and risk their lives.
“The rougher the conditions, the less skilled the divers tend to be,” Buck said.
Divers one-upping each other in search of the biggest abalone only increase the risk.
“It’s phenomenally competitive,” said Stone, the abalone class instructor. “There is some machismo, and most people don’t dive the principles that we teach.”
Good catch
After a little more than an hour in the water, the class emerged victorious — everyone had bagged at least one abalone.
“It was harder than I thought,” said Petaluma resident Allan Roan after he snagged a couple of molluscs that were just over the legal minimum length of 7 inches. “Your body is telling you to come up. It’s more psychological than anything. I can see why it’s dangerous.”
At the end of the day, Stone began the final lesson, preparing the rare delicacy that drew them all in.
Wild abalone cannot legally be sold, but can fetch around $100 a pound on the black market, according to experts.
“Because it’s so regulated, and you can’t buy it in the store, you’ll never have it unless you know someone,” Nulty said.
At a small camp overlooking the coast, Stone popped a few abalone from their opalescent shells, cleaned them and sliced them into thin steaks. The group then pounded the cutlets, breaded them and tossed them into oil for an old-school fish fry.
“We risk our lives for these things,” Nulty said while munching a hunk of the mollusc, “and we’re not tired of it.” Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky