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CARMEL, Calif.- Black abalone are a hot commodity on the black market and they're endangered along the Central Coast all the way from the San Francisco Bay to Mexico. Now one local man is charged with poaching the endangered mollusk and another suspect is still at large.
Black abalone, a mollusk that behaves like an ocean snail, are about as good as gold to poachers. 53-year-old Hoang Tan Dinh of Marina has been sentenced to three years probation and fined $15,000 for taking the sea creatures. Now investigators are looking for 41-year-old Hai Trung Luong for the same thing.
"Usually what we'll do is at low tide they'll go down on the rocks usually using screw drivers or pry bars of some sort and get down to where the abalone are to the low tides and then just pluck them off," said CA Dept. of Fish and Game Lieutenant Paul Gasket.
They play an important role in our eco-system. Gaske said sea otters and other mammals in the Monterey Bay eat them. He said poachers aren't helping them re-establish along the Central Coast. But a lot of them were wiped out by a disease called withering foot syndrome.
"They're a giant muscle and they attach to a rock. So what happens when that disease hit them, it withered their foot, which is what holds them to those rocks," Gasket said.
Officers said even caught poachers near Point Lobos, when the tide gets low. Gaske said black abalone is sold on a black market, sometimes selling anywhere from $40-$60 dollars a pop.
"Unfortunately for us we can't be everywhere at once and so we really depend upon the public to help us out and a lot of the times they're who give us the info so we can go and make these cases," Gaske said.
Black abalone is actually extinct now in most places south of Point Conception.
