LISTEN

The most recent death was on June 22. George McBeth, 56, a contractor from Santa Rosa, was about 150 yards offshore when he became ill and couldn’t be revived. He was the fifth person to die this year diving for abalone off the Northern California coast.

But as one of the “strongest divers on the California coast,” according to his wife, he had more experience than others, who are usually vacationers with little experience with local ocean conditions.

Case in point: Three of the divers who died in April were part of a group that had rented a vacation home nearby. They drowned after becoming trapped in rough waves in a narrow channel surrounded by rock outcroppings. Nate Buck, a lifeguard for California’s Department of Parks and Recreation who patrols that area, told the San Francisco Chronicle that more experienced divers—usually not locals—tend to avoid the water when it’s rough.

“The rougher the conditions, the less skilled the divers tend to be,” he said.

California banned all commercial fishing of abalone in the 1990s, but recreational diving for it is still allowed north of San Francisco from April to November, but with restrictions. Divers, who aren’t allowed oxygen tanks, hold their breath and weigh themselves down to reach the mollusks on the ocean floor.

The ban was protested by commercial divers, who predicted there would be no abalone industry. In a sense, they were wrong. While legal commercial catches have been banned, the black market is another matter. Poaching is a problem that comes to the surface on a regular basis by way of high-profiles busts (one case in 2013 netted 13 people alone). Most recently, in April, two San Francisco poachers were sentenced to three years of probation fined $20,000, and ordered to serve 240 hours of community service after being caught with 59 red abalones (the limit is three).

The year before, a commercial diver from Santa Barbara was found with four lives abalones onboard his boat with his legal sea urchin catch. He paid for it too, not only was he fined $15,000, but he also lost his commercial fishing license for life.

It’s hard not to imagine a better way. Could rules for the recreational fishery be amended to allow a limited number of licenses with applicants showing some technical skill—or even an endorsement of new divers from older, more experienced locals? I realize that kind of change would limit the number of divers, but it’s hard to be fair when you’re dealing with a limited resource.

And in some ways that limited number could be a good thing, with divers known to each other and (hopefully) invested in protecting a local resource. Perhaps, with such changes, a limited amount of commercial fishing could be allowed too?

Have you listened to this article via the audio player above?

If so, send us your feedback around what we can do to improve this feature or further develop it. If not, check it out and let us know what you think via email or on social media.

A collection of stories from guest authors.

Join the Conversation