I just got back from a weekend of freediving in Fort Bragg. Though the sun refused to emerge from the clouds, the conditions were pretty nice. We found a ton of abalone on the rocks by going into places where the entry into the water is not as easy to find (by scaling cliffs).
The water didn't seem to be especially cold, and it was pretty clear in some areas (up to 10 feet!).
The abalone were so plentiful, it wasn't a question of "is it legal", but rather, "which one is bigger". Not being a skilled skin diver, I didn't have the luxury of rejecting too many, but instead, set about the task of finding ones with the best looking shells.
I found one that looked rounder, rather than a narrow ellipse, and set about prying the ab bar under it's foot. Unfortunately, it was lodged between two rocks. I set the bar, but was unable to pry the snail off.
I dove on that abalone a few more times, and caught something out of the corner of my eye in the swirling, cloudy water, saturated with tiny bubbles from the pounding surf. In my efforts to remove the abalone from the rock, I had wounded it, and its whitish blood seeped from the wounds.
I dove down once more,and was startled to see that the red blur was a sizable rock crab, going after my abalone! The nerve! I brushed him aside, and popped the abalone off. The crab made an advance towards the abalone, but it didn't have a chance. I was off to the surface to put my catch in the bag, and it was left tasting the faint traces of abalone blood.
I have to give it to the crab, it certainly had some large gonads trying to vie with a human hundreds of times its own size. It's just lucky that this human does not have a particular taste for red rock crab...
The water didn't seem to be especially cold, and it was pretty clear in some areas (up to 10 feet!).
The abalone were so plentiful, it wasn't a question of "is it legal", but rather, "which one is bigger". Not being a skilled skin diver, I didn't have the luxury of rejecting too many, but instead, set about the task of finding ones with the best looking shells.
I found one that looked rounder, rather than a narrow ellipse, and set about prying the ab bar under it's foot. Unfortunately, it was lodged between two rocks. I set the bar, but was unable to pry the snail off.
I dove on that abalone a few more times, and caught something out of the corner of my eye in the swirling, cloudy water, saturated with tiny bubbles from the pounding surf. In my efforts to remove the abalone from the rock, I had wounded it, and its whitish blood seeped from the wounds.
I dove down once more,and was startled to see that the red blur was a sizable rock crab, going after my abalone! The nerve! I brushed him aside, and popped the abalone off. The crab made an advance towards the abalone, but it didn't have a chance. I was off to the surface to put my catch in the bag, and it was left tasting the faint traces of abalone blood.
I have to give it to the crab, it certainly had some large gonads trying to vie with a human hundreds of times its own size. It's just lucky that this human does not have a particular taste for red rock crab...
Is that the Fort Bragg in North Carolina?