Abalone's decline another sign of Puget Sound's failing health

Note: This story has been altered. Sea cucumbers are not abalone predators. The original version of this story said otherwise.

PORT ANGELES -- To keep this story G-rated (at least for the time being), let's just describe the problem faced by Don Rothaus and his crew this way:

What we've got here, folks, are some awfully lonely abalone.

Yes, Washington does have abalone, a somewhat smaller cousin to the famously overfished California varieties. But populations of our so-called pinto abalone, once gathered copiously by clued-in recreational divers, are in free fall -- before most people even knew they lived here.

The state halted abalone fishing 13 years ago. But mysteriously, their decline continues. Remaining abalone are scattered so thin that when they try to make babies -- we'll get to the racy details a little later -- many just can't seem to, uh, get it together.

"We've pushed abalone populations to a point where natural recovery is probably not going to happen," said Rothaus, a state biologist. "We're reached the point where human intervention is necessary."

And that's why on a recent day Rothaus and his co-workers from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife were checking on little hatchery-raised abalone they released 40 feet below the surface in March. Eventually, they hope, hatchery-bred abalone can supplement wild populations.

"The first step is to figure out if this is even going to work," Rothaus said recently as Fish and Wildlife divers scoured the bay bottom. "Can we do this, period? Can we get some survival?"

Why care about abalone -- an underwater snail? As a rallying cry, "Save the abalone!" isn't likely to electrify the public.

"The loss of this species or any species in Puget Sound is like a canary in a coal mine," Rothaus said. "It's a question of the overall health of the Puget Sound ecosystem and the changes we've seen in the last 20 years."

		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	University of Washington research scientist Chemine Jackels and Kristi Straus, a Ph.D. candidate in aquatic and fisheries science, measure and record data on abalone in a lab in the NOAA building in Mukilteo.

Abalone shells can be beautiful when covered with a pinkish-maroon algae. But they are silent and out of sight, living on rocky sea bottoms and often secreted away into dark crannies.

Yet abalone are an important indicator, says the state's Puget Sound Ambient Monitoring Program, which last year added them to a list of animals followed to see how Western Washington's unique inland sea is doing.

Abalone also are helpful to other animals, researchers think, because they clear algae away from rocky surfaces in some areas, making them suitable to support marine invertebrates such as sea anemones and scallops, which have their own role to play in a web of life that ultimately supports humans.

And so that's why Rothaus and his crew were making the trip to Freshwater Bay in Clallam County aboard the Clamdestine, the 28-foot-long Radoncraft.

Just before plopping their weighted-down bodies into the 45-degree water, the divers inserted heat packs inside their diving suits.

"You buy them at Safeway," said diver-biologist Tina Blewett. "It says it's for lower back pain, but I put it on my stomach. Even in a (diving) suit, you get cold."

The divers tried to locate hatchery-raised abalone, along with shells of those eaten by predators.

They measured the abalone to see how much they're growing, recording their findings with pencils on PVC slates.

Blewett saw a fish eat a crab and threaten an abalone.

"I was like, 'Run abalone, run! That fish is hungry!' "

Then it was time for the divers to cough up their data for their first dive.

"Juveniles?" Rothaus asked.

"Zero," Blewett replied.

"Adults?

"Zero live."

"Pychnos?" Rothaus asked, meaning the most dangerous abalone predator, Pycnopodia helianthoides, a sea star.

"Zero."

"Other stars?"

"One Henericia. ...."

"Cukes?" he said, meaning sea cucumbers, which are not abalone eaters.

"Zero."

The divers eventually located a single full-grown abalone on this day. Dive team member Lisa Hillier noted after examining the egg sac: "She's ready to pop!"

"We've got to find you a love interest," Blewett said.

"Thursday night -- ladies' night down at that rock pile," joked diver Michael Ulrich.

Fish and Wildlife began to notice declines in abalone stocks throughout the San Juan Islands in the early 1990s. Canadian wildlife officials closed the harvest north of the border in 1990.

Four years later, the Americans followed suit. Surveys in 1996 showed no significant change.

"What we figured was that what we did in '94 stopped the bleeding," Rothaus said.

But the decline continued, and in 2002 state officials began collaborating with Carolyn Friedman, a University of Washington shellfish scientist, to check the health of abalone stocks. Also lending support are the National Marine Fisheries Service and Taylor Shellfish Farms.

The 2003 surveys, the first since the mid-1990s, showed numbers continuing to plunge.

"That sent up alarm bells," Rothaus said. "We thought 'What the heck is going on?' You're expecting recovery."

Here's a statistic the scientists find chilling: Over the past quarter-century, the average length of abalone increased from about 3.8 inches to about 4.5 inches, an 18 percent increase.

Why is bigger bad? Because it indicates that the population as a whole is getting older -- meaning that for some reason, not as many young are being produced. Why? Well. ...

The abalone appear to know that one of the best times for the females to shoot out eggs and for males to shoot out sperm is when the moon's pull is strongest and the tides are washing the waters around at top speed.

When there's an animal every three or four feet, there's a pretty good chance the egg and sperm will hook up. But not if they're spread too thin.

With what scientists know now, they calculate that "Natural recovery was probably not possible even as early as '94 or '96," Rothaus said.

The scientists don't intend to leave any of the transplanted abalone in place. Next February, a year after they were released, they will be taken back topside.

That's because the abalone were raised in a hatchery, and researchers don't know enough yet about how they might cripple a recovery effort by accidentally screwing up the gene pool.

"There's no reason to make some of the same mistakes we made with salmon," Rothaus said. "We are attempting to perfect our hatchery techniques."

That's being done under of Friedman's direction. She and her colleagues are researching the genetic makeup of pinto abalone, and want to ensure that the animals they raise in their lab are representative of the genetic diversity that allows abalone to adapt to changing environments.

"We want to try to maintain or improve the (genetic) diversity," she said. "Our first goal is to do no harm."

About 300 abalone were planted in Freshwater Bay. If just 30 are still around after a year, it will be a sign that hatchery-raised abalone could do the trick, Rothaus said.

Can Washington's abalone be saved? There are those who express doubt.

As Joe Gaydos, Northwest regional director of the Seadoc Society, a research group affiliated with the University of California-Davis put it, "Look, this species is pretty far gone. Do we really want to spend time and money on it?"

Yes, the researchers respond.

To those naysayers, Rothaus and Friedman and Gaydos say: Ah, baloney.

"Even if we can never get it back to a place where we can reopen the fishery," Rothaus said, "it would be nice to get it to a stable place where future generations can see it."

Said Gaydos: "There's a bad moon rising here, and we need to do something about it. ... These guys are dying of loneliness and old age."

PINTO ABALONE

Haliotis kamtschatkana

		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	This mature pinto abalone is kept in a lab in the NOAA building in Mukilteo. The abalone, in rapid decline throughout Puget Sound, are collected in the San Juan Islands, spawned and then the juveniles are raised in the lab.

Abalone are gastropod mollusks -- snails, actually. Also known as northern abalone. Microscopic at first, they grow up to about six inches. Thought to live 20 to 30 years. Active at night, they eat algae and perform an important ecological function by keeping rocky areas algae-free so the habitat is available for sea anemones, scallops and many other marine creatures.

Preferring rocky reefs near shore, they can live in water up to 100 feet deep, but usually are found down to 35 feet below the surface. Old-timers in the San Juan Islands called super-low tides "abalone tides" because they could pluck up the animals living in the shallowest water.

Abalone are terrified of a sea star known as Pycnopodia helianthoides and will quickly scoot away if the so-called sunflower star comes near.

Abalone can learn behaviors. When researchers brought food to abalone in hatchery tanks, the abalone quickly figured out that a shadow hovering over them meant food was on the way. They would climb up the walls and curl their foot back in anticipation of an easy meal.

In Washington, abalone once could be found throughout the San Juan Islands down to Whidbey Island, north into Canada and out to the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with a few on the outer coast. Their overall range is from Southern California to Southeast Alaska.

Abalone can make pearls. The pearllike inlays in guitar necks are usually abalone shell.