This story aired on the August 5, 2024 episode of Crosscurrents.
Underneath one of Monterey's municipal wharfs is one of the last places you can get live abalone in Northern California. Abalone used to be a common Bay Area dish, but the sea snail has become endangered. It's now a delicacy.
Click the play button above to listen
It's 10 a.m. in Monterey and I am heading to a farm. But this isn't the sprawling vegetable farm you might be thinking of. This is an abalone farm.
ART SEAVEY: Grab these handles, step across, take your time. It’s wet and slippery.
I’m near the end of the wharf with Art Seavey, a co-owner of Monterey Abalone Company. We climb down a ladder to a narrow wooden plank. Deep underwater next to us are large cages.
One of Art’s employees hoists a cage up above the surface, so we can see. Inside, it’s like a parking garage with dozens of abalone stuck to each level.
ART: I got an abalone here in my hand and it's upside down and you can see the foot. And this abalone is shocked, like, “What are you doing? Why did you pull me off the panel?”
REPORTER MICHAELA SEAH: He's like curling into himself.
Abalone are known for their beautiful iridescent shells, but inside is a blob- like animal, with tiny black tentacles poking out. Their body is really just this giant foot that looks like the bottom of a snail, which they are, sea snails!
MICHAELA: It's pretty slimy and he’s kind of heavy!
This abalone is about the size of my palm. It took years to grow to that size. Baby abalone are bred up north. They start as microscopic larvae, then start growing their shell.
When they are old enough, they are put into the undersea cages here, where they are pulled up once a week by farmers and fed locally harvested kelp.
ART: If the abalone was in the water, and you had a piece of seaweed, and you tickled one of those tentacles with it, they would grab it.
Before Art was a farmer, he was a diver. He started abalone diving when he was a teenager, when it was more abundant.
ART: Getting into the water at seven in the morning,that adrenaline rush, was kind of addictive.
After he would cook the best of his harvest to make what's called abalone steak for his family.
ART: Bread it lightly and sauté it in butter. I try to keep it simple.
His love for diving for the sea snail is what led him to become one of the owners of the farm in 1994. Back then, there were 13 other farms. But because of disease, overfishing, and destruction of habitat, the red abalone, which is what Art raises, declined.
Commercial fishing, and Art's hobby of recreational diving, became illegal. And what Art does, the sustainable growing of abalone, is expensive. And of those 13 original farms, he's one of the only ones left.
Monterey used to be the center of the Abalone industry.
HISTORIAN TIM THOMAS: Abalone goes back in Monterey for at least 10,000 years. The native people, the Indian people of Monterey, who were the Rumsen people, they were the first divers going to that Bay.
That's Tim Thomas, a fisheries historian from Monterey.
TIM: Their word for red abalone was aluan. And then, linguists have traced that word abalone from that word aluan, that starts here in Monterey.
Tim says the next people to harvest the abalone were Chinese and Japanese fishermen, who would send the product back to their home countries, where abalone is commonly eaten.
The Chinese industry met its end in the 1890s because of racist laws such as the Scott Act, which banned Chinese workers from re-entering the country.
Abalone didn't become mainstream in America until the 1900s, when a German chef named Earnest "Pop" Doelter opened a restaurant close to the wharf in Monterey. He served a new dish he invented called abalone steak–the same one that Art used to cook.
TIM: And people came from all over for the fresh abalone steaks at Pop’s restaurants.
Pop bought his abalone from Japanese divers. Together, they made abalone a sensation. Tim says the majority of the businesses on the Monterey wharf were…
TIM: Japanese owned. Markets, processing, all because of that recipe.
Abalone became such a cultural icon, customers even wrote songs and poems about it.
TIM: (Singing) Some folks post to quail on toast because they think it’s tony. But I'm content to owe my rent and live on abalone.
There was even an event called the Chocolate Abalone Dive, an underwater scavenger hunt for abalone-shaped chocolates covered in gold foil. To this day, there are annual abalone races in Monterey and the shells are still sold as souvenirs.
TIM: Because of that recipe, he literally saved this industry.
But then during the 1940’s, the Japanese were imprisoned in internment camps during World War II. Pop’s restaurants closed in the 50s. And after the 1980s, abalone was no longer abundant.
Some people think they were overfished. They definitely were victims of disease and climate change.
Now, the days of cheap abalone dinner are over and it has become a luxury food that’s really only served at fine dining restaurants. That’s where I head to next.
JOHNNY: This guy, we slice super thin.
This is Chef Johnny Black, co-owner of the Michelin-star restaurant Chez Noir in Carmel. He is cutting the abalone out of the shell.
JOHNNY: And then we skewer it onto the bay leaf like this. And then it goes right onto the coals.
Johnny added his abalone skewers as an appetizer in 2022, to pay homage to the area. Before, he experimented with different abalone dishes, but this one really made an impression.
JOHNNY: Sometimes guests want to have abalone. Just abalone. They think that anything else detracts from the flavor of the abalone. All right, well, we're gonna give them what they asked for. We're just gonna give them abalone on a stick.
The skewers became the talk of the town.
JOHNNY: That's the top dish that people comment on. It's just like, “Oh, the abalone was so good.” It's like, “Yes, thank you. Talk to me about another dish!”
Johnny understands why people are so obsessed though.
JOHNNY: I think it really kind of brings people back to a different time. Something maybe their parents made for them, or something like that. So it is nostalgic in a way.
Johnny takes the two skewers off the grill and plates them on a shimmering abalone shell. Taking a bite was like a taste of Californian history.
MICHAELA: Oh that’s really good. Let me take another bite. That's really good! I can see why it’s the signature dish!