In Big Sur, scientists are rescuing the abalone from landslides caused by the Dolan Fire, and moving them to safety in new neighborhoods where “resident abalone” already thrive.
Wendy Bragg, a marine ecologist and doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, holds a black abalone just before it’s resettled along the Big Sur coast. Credit: Anne Marshall-Chalmers
By Anne Marshall-Chalmers Inside Climate News
BIG SUR, Calif.— It’s four in the morning, damp and dark along the central California coast. Huddled around the back of a minivan, five scientists in waders and boots tenderly move 41 black abalones from large white coolers into reusable Trader Joe’s grocery totes lined with wet, cold washcloths and ice packs.
With abalone slung over their shoulders, they hike towards a field of jagged, slick boulders, beams of light bobbing from their headlamps. The team is working at the mercy of low tides, which meant a 1 a.m. start to their day, but the morning’s early negative tide will help them return rescued abalone into the wild.
In February, Wendy Bragg, a marine ecologist and doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, along with other scientists from Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network or MARINe, retrieved 200 endangered black abalones from areas along Big Sur’s coast.
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Heavy rain had washed over land scarred by California’s worst fire season on record, creating large debris flows that barreled off cliffs and slammed into the rocky intertidal habitat. The landslides buried some black abalone alive and destroyed the rocky shoreline preferred by the marine snail, which is endemic to California and Mexico.
An arsonist is believed to have caused the Dolan Fire that scorched Big Sur, but Bragg, who has a background in fire ecology, believes black abalone, a species already vulnerable to disease, warming ocean waters and ocean acidification, may face increasing threats related to fire.
“As climates are changing, we know fires are increasing,” she said. “We know the intensity is increasing. If you think about just the terrestrial system, it’s obvious fires affect that,” Bragg said. “We now know it impacts the intertidal system.” (California’s current fire season is outpacing the historic summer and fall of 2020.)
Wendy Bragg left, leads a team of scientists resettling black abalone. Credit: Anne Marshall-Chalmers
Big Sur’s majestic, steep cliffs are prone to landslides, fires or not. The contour of the coastline beneath these slopes bends and meanders for more than 100 miles. About 70 percent of the state’s healthy, reproducing black abalone population live along this stretch of coast in the intertidal zone. Black abalone, known for the dark outer shell that boasts a glimmering, pearly underside, is the only abalone species that does not need to live submerged in water.
Last fall, Bragg watched the Dolan Fire burn along Big Sur and knew debris flows would follow if winter brought intense rainstorms. In coordination with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, she started planning a rescue operation. MARINe had extensive documentation of where black abalone resided, and Bragg conducted her own surveys. After the landslides struck, she returned to several sites, some of which were unrecognizable.
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