Hunched over a tank inside the Bodega Marine Laboratory, alongside bubbling vats of seaweed and greenhouses filled with algae, Kristin Aquilino coaxed a baby white abalone onto her hand.
…To the untrained eye, they appear pretty drab. But in this humming lab, home to more white abalone than in the wild, these invertebrates have captured minds and even hearts. They’re the unsung canary in the coal mine — their vanishing numbers sounding the alarm of human greed and the perils we face as the land and oceans burn.
…Eight months before the white abalone were packed up in Bodega Bay, Heather Burdick and her team were on a research boat off the coast of Palos Verdes, tending to the other half of the operation: Learning and practicing how to put abalone deep into the ocean.On this cold January day, they were checking on 1,200 farm-raised red abalone they had left in 20 makeshift homes built out of milk-crate-like boxes anchored to concrete slabs. Burdick and her team at the Bay Foundation had tucked them along a reef about 70 feet deep. Like easing fish from the pet store into an aquarium, these so-called SAFEs (Short-term Abalone Fixed Enclosures) help reduce the shock of a new habitat…