skip to main content

Natural Resources Defense Council

Switchboard

Andrew Wetzler's Blog

Fade to Black

Fade to Black

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.

Tags:
abalone, blackabalone, endangeredspecies, endangeredspeciesact, globalwarming, oceantemperatures

(bookmark or email this entry)

Comments

KateJan 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.

Comments are closed for this post.

We close comments on a blog post when it's clear the conversation has moved on -- click on the tags (above) or on our homepage to see if we've got fresh news and views on this post's topic.

Clean Energy Common Sense

OnEarth: NRDC's award-winning magazine

Citizen journalism from the OnEarth magazine website

Day Five of No Impact Week: Lights Out
by Solvie Karlstrom
The Not-So-Badness of Guides to Green Living
by Emily Gertz
No Impact Week Day Four: Foreign Foods
by Solvie Karlstrom

Read more

Fresh Conversation

Feeds: Stay Plugged In