red ab_P. Haaker
Great looking red taken by DFG Biologist Pete Haaker

Some divers might make 1000 dives in their California dive career and never see one. Sadly, they used to be as thick as carpet on reefs up and down our coastline but thanks to a knockout combination of overfishing and a fatal disease introduced into the ecosystem, reds are for intensive purposes biologically extinct in most of our state. Take a moment and enjoy something that’s not really here anymore. CFD is proud to present to you the late, great red abalone.

THe brick red shell and all-black epodium were common sights to local divers as recently as the early 1990's
The brick red shell and all-black epodium were common sights to local divers as recently as the 1990’s
DFGAB
There were so many abalone that they even bothered to publish books about them.