Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) were once abundant in California’s subtidal habitats, providing protein and lustrous shells to the Indigenous peoples that lived alongside them for millennia. US commercial fisheries initially focused on the herbivorous mollusk’s relatives, but following overharvesting-driven declines in those shellfish, a large-scale commercial fishery for the black abalone began in 1968, which by the early 1970s was pulling hundreds of metric tons of the animals from the coast each year. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s—when the black abalone was already in decline—a devastating microbial disease known as withering syndrome killed millions of them, wiping out more than 80 percent of the total population. This prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to designate the species as critically endangered and triggered a flurry of federal protections.
In 2020, the US National Marine Fisheries Service identified eight major actions required to conserve and restore the animals, ...
