“I’ll show you sea otters,” the abalone diver exclaimed. Those five words changed my life!
Looking back now, the series of “what if’s” that led to this crossroad continue to amaze me.
What if I hadn’t pursued the internship at KCRA TV in Sacramento, where my job was story researcher for Weeknight, KCRA’s weekly magazine-style segment. What if I hadn’t met the scientists at the Department of Fish and Game’s Wildlife Field Station? What if I hadn’t been in their office the morning that the Department’s sea otter team came in and nonchalantly mentioned a big symposium about the burgeoning sea otter vs. abalone conflict that was taking place in a couple of months.
Sounds like a great story, I thought – both for the Weeknight show and to feed my own curiosity. So I went. The conference was in Arroyo Grande, several hours from home: two days of presentations, videos, passionate pleas from sea otter lovers, loud complaints from fishermen over sea otter eating habits, which had wiped out the central coast abalone fishery, centered in Morro Bay. The conference ended with a field trip on a charter boat out of Port San Luis. Standing in line to board the boat, I struck up a conversation with abalone divers Jim Finch and Rudy Mangue, both of whom had been pushed out of Morro Bay when sea otters returned, and were now diving out of Santa Barbara. As officers of the California Abalone Association, they had come to the symposium to voice their concerns. It was Jimmy who uttered the telling words to me. After a couple of hours cruising coastal kelp beds, however, we found no otters. But, knowing that I was a writer, Jimmy offered to give me a tour of Santa Barbara’s abalone fishery. How could I resist?
I’d read all about poor sea otters, driven to near extinction in California during the fur trade and now making a miraculous comeback. I had also read news stories about the otters’ voracious eating habits:
25 percent of their bodyweight a day in shellfish – abalone, sea urchins, crabs – all delicacies for people too. I jumped at the chance to investigate the conflict firsthand, from the fishermen’s perspective. But first I needed to learn to dive. After five weeks in a crash NAUI dive course, and armed with NAUI certification, a new stylish silver dry-suit, buoyancy compensator (BC), Scubapro regulator and a newly purchased Nikonos underwater camera system, I hit the road to Santa Barbara to take Jimmy up on his offer.
Jimmy laughed when he first saw me in my dive get-up, looking like the quintessential sport diver, with kelp knife strapped to my leg, as recommended in scuba class. “Take off that kelp knife!” he ordered. It’s more likely to get tangled in kelp than help. Jimmy disdained most “sporties,” I learned. Commercial divers are a different breed, a brotherhood of close call specialists, as I wrote in my first abalone diver story (see Abalone Divers – A Vanishing Breed).
We dove with hookah gear, not scuba tanks, and that took some getting used to — you had to work to breathe (I was asthmatic in my younger days, so breathing underwater proved to be a challenge). But in the end, Jimmy kept his word: I made several dive trips on his 26’ x 8’ Radon, the Port Flush, as Jimmy gave me the tour of the fleet and the fishing grounds, introducing me to divers who told me their stories — as diverse as humanity itself.
To be sure, the sea otter vs shellfish conference was a critical crossroad. And abalone was the word that launched my involvement in fisheries. My happenstance meeting with Jim Finch motivated me to learn how to dive, to take underwater photographs. As things turned out, not long after my first adventure in Santa Barbara, I received a call from Ken Talley, then editor of Pacific Fishing magazine. The magazine was looking for underwater photos of abalone, and Ken had been referred to me by the ab diver Rudy Mangue.
Small world!! Of course, I had just taken some underwater photos of abalone, as well as topside photos of the abalone divers at work. I would be delighted to submit them to Pacific Fishing magazine. That first submittal led to a 10-year relationship as contributing editor of Pacific Fishing magazine, covering many fisheries from California to Alaska. And it all began with abalone.

Jimmy Finch suiting up

Jim Finch diving & micing abalone

Micing abalone on deck

Divers at work at the Channel Islands, southern CA

Pulling the hook

A brotherhood of close-call specialists

Abalone hiding under the reef