Beneath the Municipal Wharf within the coastal group of Monterey, a captivating experiment in ocean farming has performed out for greater than three a long time.
That’s the place the Monterey Abalone Firm grows its namesake number of seafood: crimson abalone, a gastropod or sea snail, that people have harvested and traded in California for hundreds of years. Beneath the ocean’s floor, abalone cling to the seabed with a robust, foot-like appendage and dwell in radiant shells to remain secure from predators. However, as with clams and scallops, their meat lengthy has been prized by people.
Abalone have an extended and storied historical past in California. However these underwater snails have been practically worn out by fishing and illness, and within the Nineties, regulators closed the industrial abalone fishery. That’s when Artwork Seavey, 67, and his enterprise companions started rising abalone beneath the wharf in Monterey.
The abalone are reared straight within the saltwater of the Monterey Bay, inside cages that cling beneath the wharf. They’re grown in a hatchery and fed a food plan of big kelp that’s sustainably harvested from the encompassing space. Once they’re massive sufficient on the market, the abalone are shipped reside to eating places and on to gourmands in California and past. The corporate employs 12 folks.
Since becoming a member of the corporate in 1994, Seavey has witnessed large adjustments within the abalone market and in California’s underwater ecology. He spoke with us lately concerning the enterprise. Edited for size and readability.
Q: California is house to varied species of abalone. What sort does Monterey Abalone Firm develop?
A: The crimson abalone, known as “California reds.” They take a very long time to develop. (The California Division of Fish and Wildlife) did some radiocarbon courting of shells, they usually discovered that the actually large ones, which might be 10 inches and over, might be 100 years outdated once they die. The smallest dimension we promote are about three-and-a-half inches in shell size. They’re about 4 years outdated.
Q: Who do you promote your abalone to?
A: Most of our manufacturing goes to eating places — a bunch of eating places right here on the Monterey Peninsula. After which to eating places in San Francisco and all through California. When manufacturing is sufficiently big we are able to additionally ship to the East Coast, or all around the nation.
Q: How a lot does one in every of your abalone price?
A: A medium-sized abalone goes for about $20.
Q: How’s enterprise in the meanwhile?
A: It’s been sluggish. I don’t know what’s occurring. The financial system’s been up and down. And all of the wars all over the place, and the pure disasters — I believe all people’s hunkering down. That’s my feeling. Eating places are actually sluggish right here. They’re all the time actually sluggish in January, they usually begin to decide up in March and April. They get very busy in the summertime.
Q: What does abalone style like?
A: It’s a cross between a scallop and calamari. Texture-wise, it’s extra like calamari. However flavor-wise, it’s a cross between the 2.
Q: When your prospects order a cargo of abalone, do they obtain them uncooked?
A: Sure, they’re reside and within the shell. We don’t do any processing — we expect that’s the most effective product we may give a chef. There’s a small studying curve in studying methods to shuck and cook dinner the abalone. Some folks eat it uncooked, and a few folks eat it cooked.
Q: Many alternative cultures, internationally, get pleasure from abalone.
A: Abalone has fascinating cultural affiliations. In Korean tradition, abalone is crucial for therapeutic. Different cultures think about it to be an aphrodisiac. In California, when the European settlers got here, they didn’t know what abalones have been. The Asian immigrants did. It wasn’t till the Twenties {that a} German restaurant proprietor in Monterey “invented” the abalone steak. He made it like a schnitzel, and he served an abalone dinner for a nickel. Inside 10 years, they have been pulling one million kilos of abalone a yr out of Monterey Bay.
Q: Why not harvest abalone straight from the seabed? Why do it’s a must to develop them in cages?
A: There was once a industrial fishery for abalone in California. It was closed in ’97. There was an epidemic. One of many primary illnesses that impacts abalone in California is named “withering syndrome.” It’s a illness, a micro organism, that impacts the cells of the esophagus. They get all swollen up and slowly starve to demise. There was a extremely large outbreak of that within the mid ’90s, and that led to the closure of the industrial fishery. That epidemic actually hit onerous.
Q: Does California produce a lot abalone at the moment?
A: Our farm is small. Within the ’90s, there have been greater than a dozen abalone farms in California. Now there are solely two; there’s additionally one in Goleta known as The Cultured Abalone. They’re an onshore farm, with a seawater pumping system, they usually develop the abalone in tanks. The very best variety of abalone we’ve had in our stock has in all probability been 350,000.
Larger farms are within the tens of millions. The largest farms are in South Korea and China. They’re very massive manufacturing industries, they usually have, in fact, a giant demand in China. It was once that Japan was the largest marketplace for abalone, however I’m fairly certain that China has surpassed it.
Q: However you don’t ship your abalone to different international locations?
A: We’re sufficiently small that we are able to promote the whole lot in California. We prefer it that manner.
Profile
Identify: Artwork Seavey
Place: Companion and President, Monterey Abalone Firm
Schooling: Grasp of Science in Ecology, College of California, Davis
Residence: Monterey
5 issues about Artwork Seavey
- He’s all the time beloved the ocean and joked when he was a child that he would work on the wharf in Monterey sometime.
- The current Dune films starring Timothée Chalamet are a few of his favourite flicks. He’s learn the unique ebook, by Frank Herbert, a number of instances.
- Although he has a Grasp’s diploma in ecology, Seavey identifies extra as a farmer than a marine biologist.
- Seavey as soon as labored as a shrimp farmer in Ecuador.
- In his free time, Seavey spends time together with his household, cycles and enjoys music.
Artwork Seavey, president of the Monterey Abalone Firm, in a part of the realm the place abalone is grown in cages beneath the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
The Monterey Abalone Firm positioned on the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
Monterey Abalone Firm worker Juan Trujillo, of Seaside, holds an abalone grown in a cage beneath the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
Monterey Abalone Firm employee Ian Brown, of Pacific Grove, will get an abalone cage able to be positioned within the waters beneath the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
Monterey Abalone Firm worker Juan Trujillo, of Seaside, removes kelp that the abalone feed on whereas harvesting abalone grown in a cage beneath the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
Monterey Abalone Firm worker Ian Brown, of Pacific Grove, will get an abalone cage able to be positioned within the waters beneath the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
A show exhibiting the sizes of abalone obtainable on the Monterey Abalone Firm positioned on the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group) 
Monterey Abalone Firm worker Ian Brown, of Pacific Grove, will get an abalone cage able to be positioned within the waters beneath the Municipal Wharf in Monterey, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Doug Duran/Bay Space Information Group)
