FARM HISTORY AND FACILITIES

Farm History

Our farm was first established in 1989 on the historic Rancho Dos Pueblos that sits on the Gaviota coast of Santa Barbara County. We raise the native red abalone, Haliotis rufescens through their entire life cycle from spawning and larval rearing in our on-site hatchery to the harvest and delivery of live market-size abalone.

We utilize a seawater tank system designed to accommodate the abalone for each grow-out stage. Our tanks are continuously fed with cool clean water from the Santa Barbara Channel that is pumped from a depth of 40 feet directly to our tanks.

Our abalone are grown while housed in these tanks – shaded from the sun and designed to emulate the multidimensional rock substrate of their natural environment. They are routinely harvested and sorted by size as they move through the array of tanks until harvested at an age of 3-4 years. They forage continuously on a diet of fresh seaweed. We use both the kelp Macrocystis which we sustainably harvest from the dynamic local coastal kelp beds. We also supplement with various species of native algae which are cultivated in tanks on site to provide a diverse natural basis for their nutritional needs and a final product with exemplary taste and quality. We do not use composite feeds with terrestrial proteins or antibiotics at all. The abalone are nurtured in this environment, grown from the diameter of a pencil dot all the way to harvest at market size, which is about the size of the palm of your hand.

We serve customers throughout the United States and Canada and into the Pacific Rim. We also extend our sales to the academic and analytical communities by providing abalone for water testing and by supporting a wide diversity of research initiatives. We are proud of our enduring dedication to the stewardship and sustainable farming practices that have earned our farmed abalone the coveted green rating from Seafood Watch and we continue to strive to help restore abalone to its rightful place as an iconic California seafood.