Searching for Sorensen or The Last White Abalone of Las Flores?

Abalone Recon on September 19, 2001.  (L to R, Herb Leedy, Ian Taniguchi, James Lima)

On Wednesday, September 19, 2001 at 0815, Ian  Taniguchi, a marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, Daniel "Herb" Leedy, a Fisheries Biologist with the Minerals Management Service, and I, acting as the MMS Regional Divemaster, boarded the 32-foot charter vessel Solara, at Santa Barbara Harbor.  During the one the one-hour cruise up the coast to Las Flores Beach, between El Capitan State Beach and Refugio State Beach, the seas were calm and the typical coastal overcast hung over the water and land.  It seemed the perfect metaphor for the nebulous gloom that hung over the country just days after the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  


I was familiar with Las Flores Beach.  My friends and I would go diving off that beach.  We would park on the side of the southbound lanes of US 101 opposite the "Refugio Beach 1 Mile" sign, schlep our gear across the railroad tracks, navigate through an opening in the fence, cross the bike path that connected the two beaches, slide down the bluff to the beach, and gear up to enter the water.  Going by boat was definitely easier and much more civilized.



The Ellwood Field, probably in the 1940s. 
From http://goletahistory.com/ellwood-gas-station/

We reviewed our dive plan and rigged our dive gear as we motored up the coast.  As we came abeam the Bacara Resort near Elwood Beach, I spied the extent of the bluff top grounds from seaward for the first time.  I wondered out loud  "why would anyone put a luxury resort in this place."  It was quite a transformation of the former oil field that 70 years before had been once was one of the most prolific producers in California.  Elements of that past still persisted from the Elwood Pier which serviced Exxon's Santa Ynez Unit's offshore oil platforms to the debris of old oil drilling piers on the seafloor.  I had dived that debris field, known to local divers as "The Junkyard," several times, swimming from Elwood Beach following the submerged pier pilings left in the seafloor but cut off below the surface.

Today, we were diving on modern oil field infrastructure--the nearshore rock boulder armor covering of Exxon's Santa Ynez Unit's Platform Hondo to Las Flores Canyon pipeline and power cable conduit.  The offshore platforms were provided power from the mainland electrical grid via the power cable.  This configuation to power the structures had been favored by regulators concerned about the air quality impacts if on-platform diesel generators were the primary source of power.  The power cable had experienced a failure and needed to be repaired which meant the boulder armor rock covering it needed to be removed. Therein lay the problem and the reason for our dive today.

From http://ashtabulatimes.blogspot.com

In August 2001, a pre-construction marine biological survey was completed in the nearshore area for the project.  During the initial survey, a single abalone, assumed to be a white abalone or Sorensen’s abalone (Haliotis sorenseni) found the armor rock in 22 feet of water approximately 50 feet shoreward of the conduit terminus. I was not surprised at the find; this area was colloquially known by local divers as “abalone acres.”  The specimen was not removed but the white peripodium and highly convex shell with three elevated respiratory pores were characteristic of the white abalone.  The abalone has been listed as an endangered species just a few months earlier.



White or Sorenson's abalone (Haliotis sorenseni)

Threaded abalone ((Haliotis assimilis)









Ray deWit, a consultant for Exxon, reported the presence of the organism, but he could not positively confirm the species as a white abalone.  Due to similarities in appearance, many white abalone in situ are misidentified as threaded abalone (Haliotis assimilis).  Also, the reported depth of the abalone, 23 feet, is characteristic more of the threaded abalone rather than the white, the latter of which are usually found at depths in excess of 80 feet. Biologists from the California Department of Fish and Game believed that this report warranted further field investigation.  That reconnaissance was the purpose of today's dive.  That a white abalone would be found in the shallower waters was not surprising to me, local knowledge transmitted by people such as Dennis Divins, the Diving Safety Officer at UCSB, held that white abalone were found shallower along sections of the County's coast.

We head for the marker buoy to start our descent.

Captain Skee Linowitz, Solara’s skipper, placed a marker buoy at the coordinates provided by Mr. Ray deWit.  With Ian Taniguchi leading, we entered the water from the vessel and descended to the bottom following the buoy line. The team then proceeded north toward the armor rock covering which rises several feet from the ocean floor and forms an artificial reef.  I located the abalone, having dived that location many times in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.  It had moved little from the position described by Mr. de Wit.  Ian observed the abalone and took photographs of the critter while  Herb and I conducted a thorough search of the adjacent armor rock reef for other abalone.  We but found none. While positive identification could not be made without removing the abalone for closer inspection, which would have been a technical violation of the Endangered Species Act, Ian and Herb concluded the organism was most likely a white abalone.  All I knew is that it was not a red, pink, or black abalone.

The entire dive took 32 minutes and we never exceeded a depth of 31 feet.  We had found what we had come for and done what we had planned to do--confirm the presence of what could be a white abalone.  The California Department of Fish and Game and others would decide which action, if any, should be taken regarding further identification of the organism, including possible harvesting for a captive breeding program to aid in the specie's recovery. 

The decision was to conduct an  expanded marine biological survey which was completed in April 2002. By that time, I had moved to Alaska, so I was not part of that effort.  As described in MMS and California Coastal Commission documents, the expanded survey was performed specifically to 1) characterize the habitats and dominant macroepibiota of the nearshore project area and to 2) locate and identify any abalone within two areas. The areas were east and west of the conduit corridor, approximately 825 feet long by 800 feet wide, respectively, and centered on the terminus.

The second survey did not find the initial white abalone; however, an empty shell that matched the characteristics of the shell of the single individual was found near its original location. Matching external characteristics of the shell with video taken during the August 2001 survey and pictures in the September 2001 recon strongly suggested it was the same animal. The shell was retrieved and it has been confirmed that the individual was a white (hybrid) abalone. A single mature sea otter was also observed at the site and it is possible that the sea otter had eaten the abalone individual during the period between the two surveys.  The second survey located 21 additional abalone one of which was thought to be a H. sorenseni. This white abalone was located in about 25 feet  of water about 600 feet from the conduit terminus near the base of an isolated boulder.

I find it interesting that the loss of our specimen was attributed to the sea otter seen in the area.  I don't know if this is story apocryphal a case of "see the otter, blame the otter." At the time,  as it had since the program's creation in 1987, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was obligated to capture and relocate any sea otter found south of Point Conception and outside of the San Nicolas Island Otter Translocation Area.  The problem was the otters were moving south to resume occupation of their historic range or swimming north from the translocation zone, much to the chagrin of abalone and urchin commercial fishing groups.   The program was eventually ended in 2012 after FWS determined it had failed, but it was only two weeks age that the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals overruled fishing groups' objections and that the program should be allowed to expire. 

For me, the story of this one-day activity offers many lessons:

• Cooperation between state and federal bureaus in doing field work to inform decision making is essential.
• An ocean-management bureau should have scientists trained as divers.
• Local knowledge and experience is important in designing reconnaissance parameters.
• Otters and abalone are contrary critters and can confound the best intentioned efforts of lawmakers and bureaucrats. 
• Ocean management is a long-time horizon activity with lots of variability and uncertainty (its not like counting cattle in range management), interest groups and decisions which invite judicial intervention in decision making.
• Nature always bats last.

The area was affected by the onshore pipeline spill in 2015, but that will be the subject of a future blog entry.