Up North: Pinto Abalone Outplanting in the San Juan Islands
The morning of April 12 was cold and flat gray, the kind of morning snooze buttons and steaming cups of coffee were invented for. Instead, I found myself squinting through a steady sideways drizzle down the fuel dock of the Port of Anacortes, Washington with a backpack full of cameras.
I found the R/V Caliper, the aptly named Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) research vessel, halfway through her gas tank fill. Katie Sowul of WDFW and Eileen Bates, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, were already on board, readying their equipment for the day’s work: the release of 2,700 pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) at three sites among the San Juan Islands.
Josh Bouma (PSRF) carefully transfers the tubes full of young pinto abalone into mesh bags for the last leg of their journey into the ocean. Image: Oriana Poindexter.
Pinto abalone have the largest geographic range of the abalone species on the Pacific West Coast, stretching from Bahia Tortugas, Baja California, Mexico, through California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia all the way to Salisbury Sound, Alaska. With such a broad range, the species deals with different regional threats, with the abalone in some areas doing better than others.
Here in Washington, the pinto abalone was listed as endangered in 2019, although it is not listed at the federal level. Pinto abalone harvesting in Washington State was permitted only on a recreational basis, but was closed in 1994 to allow populations to rebuild naturally. Instead of seeing an upward trend following the closures, WDFW researchers saw fewer and fewer animals as the years went by. A 97% decline in population was recorded for the animal at index sites in Washington State waters between 1992 and 2017 [1, 2].
Alarmed by this precipitous decline, a partnership of researchers from WDFW, Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF), University of Washington (UW) and NOAA Fisheries chose to take direct action by establishing a captive breeding and outplanting program for the species. Parallel work was happening in Southern California for white abalone in the early 2000’s but faced a large, early setback in 2003, while the work with pintos was slow but steady. Pinto abalone in Washington state have been outplanted consistently in the San Juan Archipelago beginning in 2009 [2].
I had made the trek up to Anacortes to document part of the Spring 2022 abalone outplant as the last piece of the puzzle for the abalone book project I’ve been working on. From my home base in Southern California, where most of the abalone restoration attention is focused on white abalone, I hadn’t realized that our colleagues up in Washington had been quietly, consistently and successfully doing the work; releasing over 45,000 animals into the wild over the last 14 years [4].
Hank Carson (WDFW), Katie Sowul (WDFW), and Eileen Bates (UW) geared up and ready to enter Puget Sound to outplant abalone. They hold two SubAqua Imaging Systems timelapse cameras, which are set up with their lens trained on the outplanted animals to gather information about abalone movements and predator activity with timelapse images. Image: Oriana Poindexter.
Learning this, I knew I couldn’t cover our suite of seven West Coast abalone species without seeing this work for myself. With a May deadline to wrap up my writing, I planned my trip as late as I dared, hoping to score some decent conditions in the northern portion of our abalone’s range. I wasn’t able to get in the water with the researchers on this blustery April morning for reasons of liability, instead staying bundled up on the boat with my cameras.
With the Caliper’s gas tank filled, we motored to the loading dock to collect the rest of the crew: WDFW’s Hank Carson and Ocean Working, and 2,700 baby abalone. The abalone had arrived in style: a large blue tank full of seawater, plugged into an oxygenator, was strapped into the back of the pickup truck. The abalone were prepared for this last leg of their journey, packed into transport tubes labeled by site number, about 100 abalone per tube. The abalone are prevented from an early escape with a layer of mesh netting secured over the ends of the tubes, allowing seawater and oxygen through but no baby snails.
We quickly and carefully move the abalone and their tubes from the tank on the pickup truck to a matching one on the Caliper’s deck. As we pull out of the harbor, the seawater in the abalone tank sloshes wildly through the half-inch gap between the lip of the tank and lid as the boat navigates through the morning’s rough seas.
This is my first visit to the San Juan Islands, and as we pull up to the first of the three outplant sites of the day, I’m baffled by how close to the rocks Katie guides the boat. I learn that many of the islands in this archipelago are very steep, with depths dropping off from 0 to 90 feet in just a few boat-lengths from the shore.
The young pinto abalone are released into the ocean inside these tubes, packed with about 100 animals each. The tubes are secured to the ocean floor within the designated sites, and the abalone are free to exit as they please. Animals with a green dot on their shells are two years old, while those with ‘naked’ shells are one year old. Image: Oriana Poindexter.
The rain has cleared for the moment, and I take in the stunning beauty of this place - thick stands of evergreens growing to the land’s edge, a few yards of dramatic rock formations exposed before they are swallowed by the green water line. Bald eagles soar overhead and a Steller sea lion gives away its presence with a few snorted exhales behind the boat.
Eileen, Ocean, and Hank zip up their drysuits and jump in, with nearly 1,000 abalone in tow. During the 2022 field season, the team will outplant 7,300 pinto abalone to 8 sites, ranging in depth from 10 to 30 feet [4].
Compared to the cream-colored young white abalone I photographed in San Diego and Los Angeles, these young pinto abalone have technicolor, tiger-striped bodies and a neon orange rim at the edge of their muscular foot. Their shells are more varied than those of their white abalone cousins, but to the untrained eye, they’d be hard to tell apart.
While the first group of divers are underwater, Katie Sowul and I pull out one of the tubes of abalone assigned for the day’s later sites so that I can get a better look at the animals. With the mesh barrier removed, some of the more rambunctious abalone start to make a run for it, while others hunker down, as if bracing against the wind. The animals cluster together near the edge of the tube, some the size of my pinky fingernail and others closer to the size of the pad of my thumb. About half sport a neon green dot of paint on their shells, meaning they are two-year-old animals that weren’t big enough to make the 7 millimeter size cut off for release last year.
Katie Sowul (WDFW) jumps in for the last dive of the day on March 12th, with a yellow bag containing ~500 pinto abalone prepared for release. Image: Oriana Poindexter.
These little technicolor pintos are the latest releases in a program that has demonstrated success. At a 2021 survey of one of the original outplant sites, nicknamed Omaha, divers observed 182 pinto abalone. A few of those abalone measure over 13cm in shell length, indicating they are likely survivors from the very first group of 260 pinto abalone outplanted back in 2009.
Fourteen years of regular releases have resulted in an average first-year survival rate of 10.2% for outplanted pinto abalone in the program [2]. This number accounts for the one-in-ten abalone that divers see with their own eyes - but abalone, especially small ones, are masters of camouflage and connoisseurs of tiny, rocky hiding places. It is estimated that divers, even highly trained, very experienced scientific divers, only sight 20 to 40 percent of the juvenile abalone at any given site [2].
In this numbers game, it’s the steady that win the race. The researchers are regularly adding animals to sites throughout Puget Sound. Later this same day, they’ll release 2,000 more abalone in cold, rough sea conditions - a hard day’s work. But it is hard work that is starting to visibly pay off, as the researchers start to re-encounter the survivors of their work years later, clustered together. With some luck, these clusters will thrive, reproduce on their own and inch outside the boundaries of their sites to meet the next cluster, eventually merging into a self-sustaining population of pinto abalone in Washington's waters.
References
Rothaus et al. 2008, WDFW unpublished data. Accessed via Busch, S., et al. "Status review report for pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana)." US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Marine Fisheries Service (2014).
Carson, Henry S., et al. "The survival of hatchery origin pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) released into Washington waters." Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 29.3 (2019): 424-441.
Busch, S., et al. "Status review report for pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana)." US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Marine Fisheries Service (2014).
Sowul, Kathleen. Personal communication, 12 May 2022.
