Abalone Hunting basically involves risking your life to pry 7″ snails off of a rock at 4:00am. Sounds fun, right? To be honest, it kind of is. Until I went abalone hunting for my first time, I don’t think I truly appreciated what it’s like to catch your own food, clean it (okay dad, so I didn’t clean it, but I watched), tenderize it, cook it, and then eat it.
This is my second year in a row traveling up along the Northern coast of California with my family in order to catch some delicious abalone. It’s a way to get away from the rush of Los Angeles, and just relax with nothing else to do but hunt some abalone, and read a good book. With all these rules, why do people do it? Because it’s actually delicious, and it’s fun to enjoy stuffing yourself with something for $60 per pound.
Surprised abalone costs so much? The 3 per person limit is one cause of the high price, but it’s also very difficult to get outside of an abalone farm. The following is the process for hunting for abalone.
You wake up about an hour before low tide. This could be anywhere from 4:00am-6:00am. You have to slip into a skin tight wetsuit to keep warm. And by skin-tight, I mean you look like a penguin waddling around while you try to keep from bursting the seams of your suit (okay so I’ve put on a couple pounds). Armed with an abalone iron (to pry from the rocks), a bag to put the abalone, flotation devices, weight system, and more, you climb down cliffs in order to find the best rocks with shelves underneath, where the abalone like to hide.
As you attempt to not crack your head open while walking on the seaweed covered rocks, you have to plug your noise to avoid the thick musty smell of festering plant life.
Inching into the freezing cold water, you can then find rocks where you have to blindly reach underneath to find the shelves in order to feel for the distinctive abalone shell. Meanwhile, it’s very common for you to reach under and grab something soft and squishy instead. On a good day, it’s just a sea cucumber.
If you’re really adventurous, you can dive down under water to find the deeper shelves, where the bigger abalone lie. While you continue to search for your limit of 3 abalone, seaweed wraps around your legs like living tentacles while your breath escapes your mouth billowing like clouds.
When you find an abalone that you think is bigger than 7″, you have to find the small crevice in the back of the shell, where you must shove your abalone iron in and try and pop that abalone off the rock. This is no easy task. Some of these suckers latch onto these rocks like Amy Winehouse to a bottle of jack.
If you succeed on popping them off the rocks, and it’s about 7″, you place it in your bag, and try and find 2 more.
After you’re done you have to lug your 3 abalone, plus all your tools, plus the water weight back up the hill, after you bag and tag each one in accordance to regulation.
Then begins the real fun…preparing it for eating. Stay-tuned for Part II.
The content on this submit is really 1 of the most effective material that We have ever occur across. I love your publish, I’ll appear back to examine for new posts.