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Then about 15 years ago, as suddenly as the disease appeared, another mystery began confounding scientists. “We were just bucketing dead abalone out of here.” “The abalone would become weak and fall off and starve to death,” said Doug Bush, an aquaculture specialist at the Cultured Abalone Farm in Goleta. Abalone farms throughout California watched as their animals, carefully raised for years, perished. “Normally there was a low percentage of animals with clinical signs of disease, around 10 to 20 percent,” but during the El Niño “almost 70 percent of the black abalone in the field had clinical signs of disease,” said Carolyn Friedman, a specialist in marine infectious diseases at the University of Washington who investigated the syndrome. When the warm waters of the 1997-98 El Niño hit, Withering Syndrome surged. Wherever abalone were found, the bacterium followed. The disease quickly spread up the coast, reaching as far north as Bodega Bay. Researchers named the phenomenon Withering Syndrome and identified the culprit as a bacterium that infects the digestive lining of abalone, crippling their ability to absorb food. Scientists noticed that black abalone in the Channel Islands were shriveling up and dying at a rapid rate. The frenzy for abalone meat, however, nearly depleted all seven species by the mid-1970s, when federal and state agencies stepped in to save the few remaining abalone by restricting harvesting.Ī decade later, a new threat emerged.
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Abalone became renowned for its sweet, delicate flavor and was typically saturated with butter and garlic like a large escargot. Abalone diving turned into a favorite California pastime, as the shellfish became the state’s equivalent of Maine’s famed lobster. Indigenous people treasured them as an important food source and used their shimmering shells to adorn ceremonial clothing.Ībalone populations exploded after California’s sea otters - the mollusks’ main predators - were hunted to near extinction by European and Russian settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries.Ī thriving commercial fishery emerged. (Photo by John Burgess/ Press Democrat)įor millennia, the Golden State’s coastline has been home to some of the richest abalone diversity in the world, with seven native species that read like a rainbow: red, green, pink, flat, white, black and pinto. Kristin Aquilino raises thousands of white abalone at the Bodega Marine Lab to replenish wild populations in an effort to save the species from extinction. The tentacles are how the abalone sense the surrounding environment. A white abalone shows its distinctive face, with two long cephalic tentacles below its eyes. How a virus became an unexpected ally in the quest to save California’s abalone is an intriguing tale - one that captivates scientists as they unravel the mysteries of the natural world. “You know, sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” “There are some viruses that are good,” said Steffanie Strathdee, co-director of the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. the little-known virus is shielding the giant sea snails from a deadly pathogen that has threatened their populations up and down the California coast. Now, two years into a viral pandemic that is plaguing humankind, West Coast scientists are hailing a different kind of virus, one that is helping to protect California’s beloved abalone. “And basically once they started withering, it was over.” “The abalone would go off feed - and just start to wither,” said Seavey, co-owner of the Monterey Abalone Co. It’s high tide, and water surges around Art Seavey’s feet as he tends to his abalone farm, which not too long ago was imperiled by a devastating bacterial infection. MONTEREY - The light under the old wharf is dim, and the sound of barking sea lions fills the salty air. A good virus comes to the rescue of California’s abalone Close Menu