How One Farm Raises the Rarest, Most Expensive Mollusk in America

"So any abalone that you eat started here. We really want to make abalone [a] California icon again. The farmed abalone are fed a diet of fresh seaweed and kelp, with about 30,000 pounds of kelp being placed in each of the 450 tanks every week."

"The delicate shellfish do not naturally produce blood clots, so one small cut could kill them. Once ready to harvest, large tanks of abalone and urchin are drained to gather the mature sea snails, which are carefully pried off the walls of the tank by an experienced harvester."

"The farm is also committed to helping with abalone conservation; wild populations have experienced a huge decline since the '70s from overfishing and habitat loss. The Cultured Abalone Farm's hatchery currently has five million eggs from white abalone, which are almost extinct on the California coastline."

The Cultured Abalone Farm in Santa Barbara, California is the dominant commercial source of red abalone in the United States, with virtually all restaurant abalone originating from this facility or its sister farm in Monterey. The farm feeds approximately 30,000 pounds of kelp and seaweed weekly to abalone across 450 tanks. Harvesting requires careful extraction by experienced workers, as abalone cannot produce blood clots and are extremely fragile. The farm prioritizes conservation by maintaining a hatchery with five million white abalone eggs, a nearly extinct species. Young abalone require four to six years to reach harvest size through gradual tank progression. Harvested abalone are shipped alive in ice-packed boxes, remaining fresh for four to five days.

Read at Eater