Andrew Wetzler's Blog
Fade to Black
January 11, 2008
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Today the National Marine Fisheries Service formally proposed listing black abalone as an endangered species. Black abalone's historic range extends from Baja California to Del Norte county, well north of San Francisco. Once a dominant feature of the southern California coast, commercial exploitation, habitat alteration, the destruction of kelp forests, and, especially, the spread of "withering syndrome," has devastated black abalone populations.
Interestingly, the spread of withering syndrome (which is by far the greatest threat to the species) seems to be exacerbated by global warming. As the Fisheries Service puts it in its listing proposal:
Suboptimal water temperatures are likely to have contributed to the decline of black abalone and pose a serious threat to the ability of the species to persist because elevated water temperatures are correlated with accelerated rates of withering syndrome transmission and disease-induced mortality. Water temperatures can become elevated because of anthropogenic sources of thermal effluent and long-and short-term climate change (e.g., global climate change and El Nino - Southern Oscillation).
Just another small victim of global warming.
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Comments
Kate — Jan 11 2008 12:13 PM
Glad to see that NMFS is recognizing the plight of the black abalone. I included a graph of the serial depletion in my earlier post on poaching, which shows the sharp drop in blacks. The toughest thing about rebuilding abalone is the need to have enough of them in one spot to have a viable spawning aggregation. They can't really get to a singles bar--you have to bring the party to them.