page_title: Abalone
section_title: Farming
hierarchical_section_title: Abalone / Human use / Farming
caption_attribution_description: English: Multi-Species Fish and Invertebrate Breeding and Hatchery, (Oceanographic Marine Laboratory in Alaminos) Lucap, Alaminos, Pangasinan[1] Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Regional Mariculture Technodemo Center (RMaTDeC) - April 20, 2011
context_page_description: Abalone is a common name for any of a group of small to very large sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Haliotidae.
  Other common names are ear shells, sea ears, and muttonfish or muttonshells in Australia, ormer in the UK, perlemoen in South Africa, and paua in New Zealand.
  Abalone are marine snails. Their taxonomy puts them in the family Haliotidae, which contains only one genus, Haliotis, which once contained six subgenera. These subgenera have become alternate representations of Haliotis. The number of species recognized worldwide ranges between 30 and 130 with over 230 species-level taxa described. The most comprehensive treatment of the family considers 56 species valid, with 18 additional subspecies.
  The shells of abalones have a low, open spiral structure, and are characterized by several open respiratory pores in a row near the shell's outer edge. The thick inner layer of the shell is composed of nacre, which in many species is highly iridescent, giving rise to a range of strong, changeable colors, which make the shells attractive to humans as decorative objects, jewelry, and as a source of colorful mother-of-pearl.
context_section_description: Farming of abalone began in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Japan and China. Since the mid-1990s, there have been many increasingly successful endeavors to commercially farm abalone for the purpose of consumption. Overfishing and poaching have reduced wild populations to such an extent that farmed abalone now supplies most of the abalone meat consumed. The principal abalone farming regions are China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. Abalone is also farmed in Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Iceland, Ireland, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, and the United States.
  After trials in 2012, a  commercial "sea ranch" was set up in Flinders Bay, Western Australia to raise abalone. The ranch is based on an artificial reef made up of 5000 (As of April 2016) separate concrete units called abitats (abalone habitats). The 900-kilogram (2,000 lb) habitats can host 400 abalone each. The reef is seeded with young abalone from an onshore hatchery.
  The abalone feed on seaweed that has grown naturally on the habitats; with the ecosystem enrichment of the bay also resulting in growing numbers of dhufish, pink snapper, wrasse, Samson fish among other species.
  Brad Adams, from the company, has emphasised the similarity to wild abalone and the difference from shore-based aquaculture. "We're not aquaculture, we're ranching, because once they're in the water they look after themselves."
caption: Abalone hatchery
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