It was another of those perfect mornings down at the beach – the infamous Perth wind hadn’t yet sprung up – and there they were again: hundreds of Chinese men, couples and families streaming down the footpaths through the dunes to the sea below.
They seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and they were clearly on some sort of mission. The sea wasn’t especially cold that morning, though it can be here, and many of them were kitted out in full wetsuits, plus snorkels and masks.
I’d seen this curious phenomenon at least twice before during previous visits to our son and his family in Perth, but no one back at the house had either witnessed it or could tell me what it was about. Instinct told me it had something to do with harvesting seafood, and the sign below confirmed it:
No wonder the authorities put signs up: on the first day of the season, a middle-aged man nearly drowned at Perth’s North Beach, one of around 50 rescued that day.
On normal days, the beach-going population, at least on Perth’s far northern beaches, is almost solely Caucasian. In fact, our area seems pretty fairly divided into three groups: Aussies, Brits and South Africans. (There’s even an Afrikaans primary school in neighbouring Mindarie!)
Abalone Season
That Sunday was one of just five abalone-fishing days a year, during a season that started on Sunday, 6 November 2016 and ended on Sunday, 5 March 2017. The primary methods are wading and snorkelling, according to the website fish.wa.gov.au/Species/Abalone.
A whopping 16,000 recreational licences are issued annually in the West Coast Zone, which stretches from Moore River in the north to Busselton in the south.
Fifteen Roe’s abalone is the maximum per licensee, and there’s a minimum size requirement. That may be why I found six or seven of the sucky little creatures, visibly still alive, lying on their backs on the sand at Iluka Beach – I chucked them back into the rocky pools, only remembering belatedly to take this photo of the last two.
Worth the Hassle?
If you’ve never tasted abalone, don’t bother. The meat is tough and tasteless. When I was a kid growing up on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, we ate both mussels and oysters off the rocks, but only knew abalone (perlemoen in South Africa) from their shells – naturally lined with a pearlescent coating and featuring a pretty line of holes along the main edge, they made perfect ashtrays.
Nevertheless, Chinese demand for its flesh makes the abalone the world’s most expensive shellfish. In Singapore groceries and supermarkets, for example, tins of New Moon and other brands are kept under lock and key – much like the S$300 bottles of Johnny Walker Blue Label.
Good luck to the Aussie government in its conservation efforts; it can’t be easy.
