The Monterey Abalone Company continues to be performing

Under the municipal quay within the coastal community of Monterey, an enchanting experiment within the ocean complex has been playing for greater than three many years.

Here the Monterey Abalone Company is expanding its number of namesake of seafood: Red ABALONE, a gastropod or sea field that individuals have harvested and acted in California for hundreds of years. Under the surface of the ocean, Abalone adheres with a robust, foot -like appendix on the ocean floor and lives in vivid bowls to be protected from predators. But as with mussels and scallops, their meat was long appreciated by humans.

Abalone has a protracted and famous story in California. However, these underwater snails were almost worn out by fishing and illness, and within the nineties the regulators closed the industrial abalone fishing. At that point, Art Seadey, 67, and his business partners, began to grow Abalone under the Kai in Monterey.

Since its entry into the corporate in 1994, SEAVEY has modified major changes within the Abalone market and in California underwater ecology. He recently spoke to us concerning the business. Edited for length and clarity.

Q: There are various kinds of abalons in California. What sort of Monterey Abalone Company is growing?

A: The red abalone called “California Reds”. It takes a protracted time to grow. (The California Department of Fish and Wildlife) carried out some radio carbon dates of mussels, and so they found that the really big ones, the ten inches and over, might be 100 years old in the event that they died. The smallest size we sell are about three and a half inches within the shell length. They are about 4 years old.

Q: Who do you sell your Abalone?

A: Most of our production goes to restaurants – a couple of restaurants here on the Monterey Peninsula. And then to restaurants in San Francisco and throughout California. If the production is large enough, we may also send to the east coast or across the country.

Q: How much does one in all your abalones cost?

A: A medium-sized abalone costs about $ 20.

Q: How is the business for the time being?

A: It was slow. I don't know what's occurring. The economy was up and down. And everyone gets in every single place and the natural disasters – I believe everyone heals. That's my feeling. Restaurants are very slow here. They are all the time very slow in January and begin picking up in March and April. They are very busy in summer.

Q: How does ABALONE taste?

A: It is a cross between a scallop and Calamari. With regard to the feel, it’s more of Calamari. But with regard to the taste it’s a cross between the 2.

Q: If your customers order a delivery from ABALONE, do you get them raw?

A: Yes, they live and within the shell. We don’t do processing – we imagine that that is the very best product that we can provide a cook. There is a small learning curve when learning how you can shake and cook the abalon. Some people eat it raw and a few eat it cooked.

Q: Many different cultures enjoy abalone.

A: Abalone has interesting cultural affiliations. In Korean culture, Abalone is crucial for healing. Other cultures consider it an aphrodisiac. In California, when the European settlers got here, they didn't know what Abalones were. The Asian immigrants did it. It was only within the Twenties that a German restaurant owner in Monterey “invented” the Abalone Steak. He did it like a schnitzel and served an abalone evening dinner for a nickel. Within 10 years, they drew a million kilos from Monterey Bay for a yr.

Q: Why not harvest Abalone directly from the ocean floor? Why do you could have to grow them in cages?

A: In the past, there was industrial fishing for abalones in California. It was closed in 1997. There was an epidemic. One of the foremost diseases concerned in California is known as “Withing syndrome”. It is a disease, a bacteria that affects the cells of the esophagus. They will all swollen and slowly starve. In the mid -Nineties there was a extremely big outbreak of it, and this led to the closure of business fishing. This epidemic hit really hard.

Q: Does California produce quite a lot of abalons today?

A: Our farm is small. In the Nineties there have been greater than a dozen abalone farms in California. Now there are only two; There can be one in Goleta called the aesthetic abalone. They are an onshore farm with a sea water pump system and construct the abalons in tanks. The highest variety of abalones we had in our inventory was probably 350,000.

Larger farms are within the tens of millions. The largest farms are in South Korea and China. They are very large production industries and naturally have great demand in China. Japan was the most important marketplace for abalone, but I'm pretty sure China exceeded it.

Q: But don't you send your abalons to other countries?

A: We are sufficiently small that we are able to sell every thing in California. We prefer it that way.

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Name: Art Seavey

Position: partner and president, Monterey Abalone Company

Training: Master of Science in Ecology, University of California, Davis

Residence: Monterey

Five things about Art Seavey

1. He all the time loved the ocean and joked when he was a baby who would at some point work within the Kai in Monterey.
2. The youngest Dune movies with Timothée Chalamet are a few of his favorite movies. He read the unique book by Frank Herbert several times.
3. Although he has a master's degree in ecology, Seadey identifies more as a farmer than as a marine biologist.
4. Saavey once worked as a shrimp builder in Ecuador.
5. In his free time, Seadey spends time along with his family, cycles and enjoys music.
   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

Originally published: February 2, 2025 at 8:00 a.m.