The Progreso Cooperative Fishing Society, in northwestern Mexico, started its blue abalone fattening farm as a business that proved to be largely sustainable.
Aquaculture reduces pressure on wild abalone and helps to repopulate this endangered species.
When the cooperative, located in La Bocana, Baja California Sur, was given a concession to extract blue abalone by diving in 1987, they were conditioned to undertake a program to produce abalone seeds and repopulate the sea, but over time they realized that this technique was useful for developing their fattening farm, which they created in 2014.
Since then, a new sector of medallion size abalone has exploded, which generate profits all year round, unlike wild abalone, which is only harvested during a certain season.
This is how they discovered that blue abalone has a high tolerance to manipulation because it is coastal and can be exported alive, unlike wild abalone, which is why they entered a highly profitable market in China.
“2021 was when we began to export cultivated abalone to China, and with a higher price than wild abalone, right now it is around 95 dollars per kilo of live abalone to China. So in 2021 the market was first entered with 42 dollars, by 2022 it increased to 72 or 75 I think, and by 2023 we reached 95 dollars per kilo,” said Juan Domingo Aguilar, oceanologist at the Autonomous University of Baja California and coordinator of the aquaculture and fisheries department of the Progreso Cooperative.
For Aguilar, it is not clear if the price of the product is due to the fact that markets in China consider farming to be a responsible practice for the environment or, simply, because of the size and novelty of their product.
Aguilar says that abalone production is migrating from diving to land-based farms and, in the future, they will probably no longer dive, because he is sure that aquaculture is an activity that promises to be the future of marine food production.
Advantages against wild abalone
Fishermen collecting wild abalone for sale. Source: Cooperativa Pesquera Progreso.
The extinction of abalone is related to its high sensitivity to changes in temperature caused by climatic phenomena and the reduction of the giant algae it feeds on, which also puts it at a disadvantage compared to farms where the temperature of the ponds can be controlled and fed.
For example, in 2017, there was a red tide that suffocated yellow and blue abalone, so since then fishermen have not been able to collect this species in its wild form. However, it was only in 2024 that they authorized a quota to extract five tons of yellow and two tons of blue abalone from February to August, during which the season lasts.
“The red tide created hypoxia (lack of oxygen) at the bottom of the sea and since abalone is a species that cannot move quickly, it stays and suffocates. Since then, we have not been able to work with abalone until the populations recovered. Right now, the one that recovered the most was yellow, in fact 2024, it's the first year since 2017, that we worked abalone,” Aguilar said.
With hypoxia, models indicate that yellow abalone populations will recover to natural reef status within 12 years, while for blue abalone, 25 years are missing.
However, these projections contemplate the measure of fishing for the authorized quota, but this gap will probably be shortened by the repopulation work undertaken by the cooperative, so it ensures that it is out of danger.
“We have the capacity to restore a population again. The unit we have has been successful and with a couple of abalone you can do a lot. So, we continue to repopulate the sea. Every year, more or less, we release 100 million larvae in the fixation stage, which is when they are already starting to stick to the pebbles. And we are going to plant 100,000 half-centimeter abalone into the sea already these days. We continue to throw him into the sea and we are going to keep throwing him out and if for some reason another of these hypoxia comes back, well, we already have many breeding stock safe in ponds to restore populations,” he said.
Blue abalone seeds ready to be planted in the sea and for the fattening farm. Source: Cooperativa Pesquera Progreso
A resilient cooperative
When the farm project was proposed to the more than 100 members of the cooperative, there were those who disagreed. It was inconceivable for a fisherman to go from being in the sea to being on land cleaning ponds, Aguilar says.
But in the Progreso cooperative there is room for everyone, for those who want to catch lobster and octopus; dive wild abalone or octopus; fish for scale with a piola and hook or with nets; and those who prefer farms.
They even have an ecotourism project called Bocana Adventures. The farm is just one of many activities they do, which diversifies them and turns them into a resilient cooperative.
“We have several products such as smoked, natural or pickled bonito mackerel. We work on different fish presentations, we have an ecotourism complex called Bocana Adventure; we have an oyster farm and an abalone farm. The company always grows big because sometimes, with the lobster you don't have to pay all the salaries you need to cover everything. So, by force, we have to fish. The fisherman has to be working all year round,” Aguilar said.
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