Author: Debra Utacia Krol / Source: Atlas Obscura
The earrings are only a couple of inches long, but the masterfully carved salmon look like they’ve leaped from the water to whisper in the wearer’s ear. Their glowing red hues and iridescent opalescence caress the eye.
These colors occur naturally in the medium in which Leah Mata, a Northern Chumash artist, works: the shells of the red abalone, or Haliotis rufescens.Abalone shells and the rich meat inside have sustained Mata’s people throughout their existence. And the Chumash are just one of the coastal Native communities for whom abalone holds a central place in culture and cuisine, and in jewelry, regalia, and ceremonies.
Now, however, a “perfect storm” of overfishing and climate change is driving the abalone perilously close to extinction, pushing the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to cancel the 2018 abalone fishing season.
Although the ban poses potential economic harm to the estimated $24 to $44 million sport-fishing industry, it could spell subsistence and cultural disaster for the tribes. Since California tribes lack treaty rights or other federal or state laws allowing them to pursue their traditional lifestyle, they have little leverage to seek cultural or subsistence exemptions from the ban.
“I’m absolutely heartbroken,” said Clint McKay, a cultural consultant with the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians in Sonoma County. “We need to maintain the relationship we have with the ocean and the plants and animals within it, or we’ll lose that connection.
”For millennia, the 20 or so coastal California tribes have relied on abalone as an important source of protein, harvesting the shellfish at sustainable levels. Commercial fishing began in the late 1800s and gained intensity over the years. By the 1990s, several species had nearly been wiped out, prompting wildlife officials to halt the practice. Recreational fishing was permitted, but the harvest was strictly limited to allow the invertebrate to recover.
In other states, tribal members typically can engage in subsistence activities outside recreational fishing and hunting regulations, thanks to sovereign territory rights, as with Alaska Natives…
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