Salami, Salami... Abalone
Pictures and story by Maude Lynn.
Ah, the wiley abalone is
one of the Pacific's most sought after delicacies. Every year
enthusiastic but stupid divers lose their lives over the fast
and vicious abalone.
While some people do make buttons and use the beautiful mother-of-pearl-ish shells for jewelry, most of us hang the empty shells on our fence posts kind of like what the English used to do with their tower guests.
You have to wear a wetsuit. You have to get up at 5AM. You have to hike down to the ocean, which at our place means 300 feet down, the last 150 hanging onto a rope while you rapell down the last 30 feet like some Navy Seals invading a country. It's still dark out. Then stumbling and slipping on the seaweed-covered rocks (we wear golf shoes with spikes) to get out to the places where the abalone lurk. Finally, already tired and sweating in your wetsuit you get into the ocean. Usually a big wave breaks over you immediately so you can swallow some salt water. You'll be swallowing alot more before you catch your limit of 4 abalone. They hide. They look just like rocks. They have huge muscles and their little single cell brains have only to think of one thing - HANG ONTO THE ROCK. You have to hold your breath while you search under the water for them while the waves pound you.
When you found one and measured it (to be legal size) you have to take your crowbar and pry the sucker off, while the waves are pounding you. They don't like this. They can breathe under water. You can't. It's harder than you'd think. Four of them (the legal limit) weigh about 25 lbs. You also have a weight belt. You are also really really tired. You have to drag yourself, your weightbelt, your sack of abalone in from about 100 out in the ocean. You have to reverse rapell up the hill with the abalone and the weight belt. It's still three hundred feet, only now is UPHILL. When you finally get to the top, you can feel your thigh muscles fluttering like a hummingbird. It's now 8AM and you still have to gut and clean them, slice them, and pound them tender. Some people put this off till evening because they have to go to work. We usually have to have help getting our wetsuits off. (husbands do this really well.)
By now, you can't wait to eat
them. Lightly breaded and sauteed in olive oil is the traditional
way. They taste very very sweet. Lately we've become fond of
Abalone Carbonara, which is cooked whole, then sliced. (a little
less work). Abalone Marsala is also very good.
Abalone season is from April to November with July closed.
I might have to have some tonight!
Maude Lynn lives on the Mendocino coast and while she's not chasing abalone and getting Al to clean them, she polishes her Emmys and lines them up like bowling pins.