The crisis came for the abalone tank at Pacifica High School in mid January — a pump failure, throwing tank conditions dangerously out of whack — and the students tending it couldn’t reach their instructors.
The cluster of small, disk-shaped shellfish was in jeopardy. The students had to act fast.
So they improvised, using a sophisticated knowledge of aquaculture chemistry plus a little clever engineering.
“We had to do a water change,” said senior Mindi Jensen, 18. “Water ended up everywhere.”
Marine biologist Nancy Caruso, who is teaching students in seven Orange County schools to grow green abalone as well as white sea bass, marveled at the Garden Grove students’ quick action.
“They couldn’t get ahold of us, and they fixed it,” said Caruso, who hopes she’ll be able to transplant the abalone to the ocean, repopulating a species shattered decades ago by disease and possible overharvesting.
They found another pump, attached it properly, then balanced salinity, nitrates, temperature and other factors to keep the 4-inch creatures alive.
The feat is especially impressive when you consider a telling detail: few experts know how to grow abalone in a “closed” system, such as a classroom, instead of open systems connected to the ocean.
“What we’ve been focused on is just getting these systems stabilized,” said Steve Doucette, who teaches an advanced-placement environmental science class at Pacifica.
If she can gain the proper permit from the state Department of Fish and Game, Caruso said she plans to seed the classroom-grown abalone along the Orange County coast, perhaps helping restore the species to historic levels.
A variety of abalone species were once plentiful on California shores, treasured as seafood, their distinctive shells sold in beachside shops. Green abalone shells could grow to eight or nine inches across.
But steep declines likely began in the 1950s, said Fish and Game senior biological specialist Ian Taniguchi.
Although most fishing focused on red and pink abalone, all species plummeted, including once abundant green, pink and black abalone.
And they faced a second assault: withering foot disease, which also brought down their numbers.
Fisheries were closed in 1997, and only a recreational fishery for red abalone remains in northern California.
Early repopulation efforts were abandoned more than a decade ago, Taniguchi said, when yet another threat began to spread among farmed abalone.
The sabellid worm infested and deformed their shells, making them unsuitable for dining; biologists did not know what effect the worms would have if released into the wild.
“We haven’t issued a private stocking permit in ages,” Taniguchi said.
Now, however, the worms appear to be under control, if not eradicated, in abalone aquaculture facilities, he said.
And the number of green and other abalone species along the coast appears to be improving, though the greens, listed as species of special concern in California, still hang on only in pockets off Orange County.
All that could help Caruso’s chances of getting a permit, which Taniguchi said were “good.” It could come by spring, although a backlog of work at Fish and Game, plus funding cuts, could mean delays.
For now, the students at Pacifica and the other Orange County schools will keep tending their flocks, feeding kelp to the single-footed abalone.
They’re growing white sea bass at Huntington Beach High School, green abalone at Santa Margarita Catholic, Los Alamitos and Dana Hills high schools, and Warner and Thurston middle schools.
All will take part in a public event, “Kelp Fest,” on April 16 at Main Beach in Laguna Beach, Caruso said.
Students in Doucette’s advanced placement class were constructing models of abalone this week, learning details of their anatomy from Doucette and Caruso.
The project seems to energize the students, who learn quickly how to care for the creatures, she said.
“There are a lot of aspects to the problem: chemistry, biology and personal leadership,” she said.
Jensen, who hopes to become a “holistic veterinarian” and was unofficially dubbed Pacifica’s “abalone queen” by Caruso, said she thinks about the abalone day and night.
“I freak out over it,” she said.
