ABALONE

     Abalone are a favorite food for some marine species including sea otters. Otters are one of the few tool-using mammals and they are known to carry a rock that they use to crack the shell of the abalone underwater so they can remove it from its substrate. They then use the rock, at the surface, to crack the shell off and eat the yummy abalone. An occasional shark or large fish may be able to get small abalone off the rock for a meal, but, in general the abalone is well protected by its strong shell. For thousands of years the abalone existed with its natural marine predators.

Native Americans harvested abalone from the intertidal zone. The numbers of harvesters and their small area of harvesting (restricted to ‘picking’ abalone at low tide) probably had a relatively minor effect on the population of abalone. Abalone shell pieces are found in Indian middens along the coast of California, showing that this was a common food item for hundreds of years.