Trevor Fay grabs a fistful of fresh, crisp kelp and crams it into a large steel cage hidden within a dim, wooden cavern beneath Municipal Wharf No. 2, just a few hundred feet from where tourists browse gift shops and book whale-watching trips.
It’s feeding time for the more than a thousand baby abalone that line the cage in the “nursery section” of the Monterey Abalone Co.
Since 1992, the iridescent-shelled abalone have thrived in the company’s cages, which hang suspended in the Monterey Bay’s waters from a barnacle-covered platform under the pier. A trapdoor at the end of the commercial dock serves as the entrance to an underworld that smells like brine and rings with the sounds of sea lions roaring and metallic gears cranking up cages.
Fay, the son of a marine biologist and a Salinas rancher, manages the aquaculture operation with his business partner, Arthur Seavey. The two strive to cultivate native California red abalone sustainably in the same waters the species has populated for millennia.
“They are feeding the abalone what they usually eat where they usually eat it,” said Michael Graham, a scientist at Moss Landing Marine Labs. “They’ve pretty much taken all of the negatives out of aquaculture.”…
Read the full article at SantaCruzSentinel.com.
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