Abalone Tips

[JustinW]

You cannot use the knife as a tool to harvest the abalone, but by all means, when you are on breathhold, diving under kelp, a knife is essential (in my book) Also, if you ever do get caught in kelp, remember that it is very stretchy, so do not try to pull against it, you will only burn up your little oxygen, instead snap it by folding it over on itself, it breaks very easy that way.

Last year i got caught in kept for a brief moment, that certainly wasn't fun at all and was quite scary, even though my head was only 4 feet below the surface.

Another cool idea I read somewhere was to take flexible airline tubing for an aquarium, use a long enough section that it reaches the surface, tie one end off to your ab bar and seal the other end, it will be inflated with air and the end will float to the top, It doesn't tangle and makes a nice marker. I'm a bit skeptical of this, but it might work alright. In the past I have made cheap floats out of some synthetic twine and a piece of PVC with the ends sealed. I used a strip of lead to roll around the PVC, and stuffed this in my weight belt. It was quick and easy to deploy and could be rolled up quickly too.

 

[mweitz]

Good thread (though I came across it a bit late). I did my first couple of Ab dives over the weekend. It was LOADS of fun!

So, it was the first time I've ever done freediving. Though I know a tiny bit about the theory, I still sucked (I think). I managed to limit both days (and I'm 5# heavier to show for it, YUM).

So, now my question. I would go down and search around (with the anchor in my hand) then drop it, either next to an interesting area, an ab or whatever. Sometimes it would take me 4 or 5 dives to get the ab, one to find it, one to measure it, one to figure out how to remove it, then one or two more to actually go down, find it and take it off. I'm sure I'll get better with this as I do it more. When I would come up I would be huffing and puffing quite a bit. How long should you wait between dives? Is there some type of rule?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[JustinW]

Mark, those are some good questions. Like I said before, i usually surface swim to an area with kelp stalks reaching the surface, Then I know there is a rock at the bottom, and since abalone eat kelp, likely an abalone too. I know what 7" looks like by the span of my hands, if the ab is larger than the span of my hands, I know its a keeper. I then pop it. So usually my divers are 45 seconds to 1:30 seconds. I spend most looking, then a few seconds measuring, then a few seconds lining up with my ab bar, then a few seconds popping it off, by this time my heart is racing. I jam to the surface as fast as i can, looking up all the way, I exhale when i know the surface is just a few feet (added bonus of clearing the snorkel) and then make a big inhale when i get to air. i spend 2-3 minutes between dives, at which time my buddy goes down and I watch his every move, ready to dive again if he should need help (and thats happened before). There is no rule that i have heard, although it helps to make sure your face is wet and that you clear your mind. If everyone is on the surface, I will often float and then close my eyes trying to force my heartrate down. I go after I have had plenty of time to catch my breath and when my heartrate has slowed.

 

[renpirate]

Hi Mark,

Glad to hear you had a successful hunt!

The key to getting better is practice, like everything ;-) Try controlled breathing exercises and meditation. Often people get excited and burn up their oxygen stores fairly quickly. Try to be as Zen as possible. On the surface do not try hyperventilating, although it seems like it helps it can lead to shallow water blackout due to the reduced levels of C02 in your system. The other trick is to pull yourself down the kelp instead of kicking. The large muscles of your legs burn alot more O2 than your arms.

Give me a holler next time you're up this way and we can go out together.

 

[mweitz]

Thanks guys!

I will let you know. Though the drive was long to Van Damme, it really is perfect for a newb.

I'll practice my breath holds while driving since do so much <JOKE>

Mark

 

[BrianM]

I wish I had seen a thread like this last year when I started ab-diving!! Justin has some very good tips and suggestions in his post.

I got most of my abs at Stillwater last year and I did a lot of SCUBA diving there too so I got to know the area pretty well. I haven't been over to the right (North side) but I have been to the left and to another small cove 500 yards south and a few spots in between. I had some really good luck just South of the edge of the cove last summer.

To find those pesky abs, I usually look for those big round reef rocks that are covered with the stuff that looks like short pink fern/grass sorta stuff. In the area around Stillwater, you can find those rocks with the tops about 10 feet from the surface. Then I dive down and go around the base of those big rocks. That pink fern stuff only grows on the tops of those huge boulders, so if you get down between that and the bottom, the sides of those rocks will look like concrete and there are usually a bunch of those one-footed varmints frolicking around, waiting to be adopted.

I do use the Bull kelp to clip my float or kayak to, and it sure helps to pull yourself down with. One thing to be careful of though is the Palm Kelp. That's the stuff that has a slender stalk about 2 or 3 feet tall and has one big leaf on top. When you see that stuff there are usually a lot of abs around underneath the canopy of it, but I have gotten my snorkel caught on it more than once and it kind of freaks me out to swim under it now.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I'm gonna let all you guys in on a few things I found out over the few years I've been doing this.
A former state freediving champion told me all the 10's he's found were on rocks that were surrounded by sand. The reason for this is that during times of rough conditions the sand works to remove parasitic worms off the abs shell enabling the ab to continue to grow continuously. Abs that live in very rocky areas that are protected generally will have more parasites in the shell which creates those little holes. The ab then expends all it's energy to thickening and rebuilding the shell and the outer dimension ceases to expand. That's not to say that you cannot find a hog in rocky areas, but percentage wise this is true. How many times have you dove a particular area and found that say 8 1/2" is about the biggest one in that area even after hours of diving?

Another tip (from me) is to invest in a pair of long blade freediving fins. If you are going to take this ab/freediving stuff seriously and want the ultimate in performance you need to get freediving fins. I own a pair of Picasso Black Team full foot fins and I wear them with 5 mm neoprene socks. I will not go back to regular fins for freediving.
The absolute worst fins for freediving are split fins of any brand. They may work OK for some people for scuba, but in my opinion and the opinion of 99.9% of the freediving community, split fins have no place in freediving.

The third thing is that instead of an ab float. get a boogie board and use that. I used to use a tube but I speared alot of fish in combination with ab diving and the fish spines popped holes in the tube. A boogie board can't get popped. What I did was took 6 stainless threaded eyes and drilled holes through the board along the outer edge. Two at the front corners, two at the center edges, and two at the rear corners then bolted the eyes through the board with big fender washers (with the eyes on top). I then took one continuous lenth of bungee about 30 feet long and wove a web from eye to eye, back and forth, across the top of the boogie board knotting the bungee at every intersection. With this, I could stuff all my gear under the bungee web on top of the board including spear gun, ab tools, otter box with licence, big lingcod. For the abs all I have to do is just place them on top of the board and they suck down and won't fall off even if the board flips over.

I also got one of those picasso open cell neorene freediving suits and I have literally been in the water for 6 hours straight and NEVER got cold. There are other brands that work just as well.

Humboldt County has the worlds biggest abs BTW, somewhere around Petrolia, that's as close as I'll say. That's where the world record came from , 12 5/16", up on the lost coast.

Good luck all.

ZKY

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

Could someone be so kind as to put in a picture of the abalones you're talking about? I have a growing sensation I've left quite a few down there due to lack of knowledge...

 

[seakdivers]

You guys crack me up! I couldn't imagine prying something as big as your abalone off a rock - they are huge!!

6 inches is about the maximum size you will see from our abalone. We have the Pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana), and they don't much bigger than 5.5 inches. We aren't supposed to take any that are less than 3.5 inches from what I remember.

They are a tiny breed of abalone - but they are soooooo tasty!!

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

You guys crack me up! I couldn't imagine prying something as big as your abalone off a rock - they are huge!!

6 inches is about the maximum size you will see from our abalone. We have the Pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana), and they don't much bigger than 5.5 inches. We aren't supposed to take any that are less than 3.5 inches from what I remember.

They are a tiny breed of abalone - but they are soooooo tasty!!

Well, I did ask for a picture, not a joke

However, I've cleared things up since I found we don't have abalones 'round here. I mistook the name for something else you might find on the US east coast:

Arctica islandica

They're supposed to be eadible. I cannot confirm this though... What's more, they get up to 250 years old(!) and they are plentyful in Norwegian waters.

Anybody know something about these, and especially preparing them?