Abalone is by far my favorite seafood, where we dove for them is on the TV show "Shark Week" all the time. All the times I dove there, I never saw The Tax Man= Great White Shark.
I haven't had Abalone in over 25 yrs, seems longer, We'd go up to Fort Bragg CA and catch Ling Cod, dig for Pacific Geoduck clams, and dive for Abalone it was awesome, what a feast, and camping on the CA coast is flat out amazing. I used to get most of my Ab's in 25' of water, I was taught to dive for Ab's by two Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers that I met in a parking lot on the coast. No one I grew up with dove for them. So I said screw it and drove up by myself, and sat in the parking lot asking people if I could tag along. The first two guy's I met said "heck yeah, you asked the right guys", they let me shoot two big Ling Cod with their spearguns, then we swam out to a big wash rock in the middle of the cove to dive for Abalone, I got four 8" Ab's in two dives in 20' of water, they were super impress by that. I swam and played Water polo and water skied my whole life and grew up with a pool in the backyard, so I was super comfortable in the water diving!!!
We became super good friends, still are super close with them. I'n return I taught them how to hunt wild hogs, ducks, geese, pheasant, and turkey.
Pacific Geoduck clams. The locals call them "Horse D!ck Clams", I'm not sure why???

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