Thursday June 4, 2026
Phys —
Black abalone once carpeted the rocky shores of California by the millions. The large, long-lived sea snails sustained Indigenous peoples along the coast for thousands of years, anchored a thriving 20th-century commercial fishery and inspired generations of California cooks, divers, and artists.
Then, almost overnight, they vanished.
In 1985, a bacterial illness called withering syndrome appeared along the Southern California coast. Within just a few years, it killed roughly 99% of black abalone across their range. Fishing for them has been banned since 1993, and in 2009 it was added to the U.S. Endangered Species List. Today, the critically endangered survivors cling to a handful of intertidal sites along the coast of California and Mexico.
A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz Genomics Institute has now reconstructed what black abalone populations looked like before the collapse, and the answers could change how scientists think about saving them.