That’s so sweet about your abalone-diving neighbor. It IS too bad he moved away. What a treat that was to have him share that bounty with you.

Author: CAROLYN JUNG, Mercury News

Saturday nights at the Petaluma Fairgrounds, Silicon Valley mechanical engineer Doug Hayes indulges his passion for speed, strapping himself into a stock car to burn rubber around a noisy, dirt oval at 100 miles per hour.

Then Sunday mornings, he climbs bleary-eyed aboard his cabin cruiser at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay to tackle a different pursuit, one that moves at an excruciatingly glacial pace.

But when you’re the only farmer in Half Moon Bay raising abalone — which grow an inch a year, if that — you learn patience.

A lot of patience.

Hayes started applying for permits to establish the underwater farm when he was 35. This is the first year he began selling the pricey, live delicacy to the public and to a few restaurants. He’s now 50.

”I like speed,” Hayes says, realizing the contradiction. ”Go figure.”
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That sparked me to drive to Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point and purchase a few small ab–as Doc Dave says–at $24/lb shell-live. Stuff happened that day so I didn’t have time to pound, flour and pan-fry myself so I took the abs to a local (Redwood City) sushi place and, after paying yet another hefty fee, had them prepare the mollusks for my dinner later that evening. It was (surprise surprise) sashimi style and I discovered to my horror that the fresh crunch touted by others in no way equalled the exquisite pleasure I always enjoyed dining on traditional preparation. Clearly my bad.

It also made me bemoan the moving of a next door neighbor, a retired fireman who, used to free-dive for abs, then later, after pounding several in his backyard, would ring my doorbell when we, with not much more than large mutual smiles, he’d hand me a sack of ready-to-fry abs and I’d hand him a few bottles of top-end Chards. I so miss those days!

the economics is messed up. consumers in asia are willing to pay up to 100 bucks a can, yet even at that price, if you do the math, the farm raised product still cannot compete against that of wild-caught (read poached). basically, it is a simple proposition, until they are extinct, there is not much economic incentive to do mass produced farm-raised. so farm-raised has remained a niche market for 50 years. as you noted with all the permit and slow growth, it is a significant upfront investment. there are few farms out there (perhaps only 100 or so in the west) and little competition. people who run abalone farms are mostly sea-grant academic types who are happy to ship live abalone to japan for sashimi. basically no one wins if the price of the abalone drops through farm raising, no one except consumers.

think about it, delicious protein, eco-friendly. yeah, that and nuclear fission.

what gives?

seems like the slow growth rates, are the rate limiting factor here. that and the fact that the cartels will find it cheaper to poach than to buy from abalone farms until it becomes truly extinct. plus there simply isn’t a domestic market to support expansion of abalone farms.