In the Bay Foundation’s two-year-old Abalone Research Laboratory on Terminal Island, abalone of varying sizes pass their days submerged in white tanks of saltwater. They look more like bewhiskered stones than snails, but when a palm-size one is removed from the water, the mollusk rises up on the muscular foot it uses to attach to surfaces and swivels defensively to the left and right. As two tiny eyes peer out from beneath the shell, short tentacles tickle the air, revealing a certain obstinate charm. “You hang out with them long enough, and then you just fall in love with them. I don’t know why,” says Heather Burdick, the foundation’s marine programs manager…
What’s Being Done to Revive L.A.’s Decimated Abalone Population
