doug b bush: it's just l like a garden snail, exceptpt instead f eating y your basil l and your littttle baby ararugula starar's eating seaweweed. one shell anda foot. this is what you eat. this isis just a bibig, muscular foot that it crawls aroround and hols onto the rock. krisistin aquilinono: abalone ha reallyly importantnt economic it on this statate. they y supporta lulucrative cocommercial fisherr decades. they also supported a recreatitional fishery that brought about $45 million to the north coast of california until recently, and they support realally sustaininable aquaculte inin the statete. woman: the red abalone fishery was a major fishery, recreational fishery on the north coast for decacades and ae really critical for the culture of california for r that time. we had to recommend to the fish and game commission that it be closed after several years of severe impacts to the kelp forest. lackey: it's definitely affected business, and my tours have been greatly y affected f for the abb diving. and they estimate that it's, you k know, anywhere from $44 to $5454 million out of

aquilino: much of what we e do here in ththis program has been inspired b by what abalone farms do, people likike doug bush and dan swezezey at the e cultured abalone e farm have e really hed us figure out how to maximize producuction in this lab. so wee take their best methods and then we tweak them for r white abala, so it t really helps sustainable aquaculture in this coununtry ad the restoration of a species. bush: i'veve been banging this drum for a whilele, to really st ofof draw attetention to a abal. it's s just a pererfect, bannnnr species.s. aquacultuture and mae science hahas a tendenency to st of do a real cutut-and-pastete e of research, and so it didn't seem to me to be a great way to necessarily advance e the body f knowowledge on h how you canan t change and keep p that learnrnig trajectory movoving forward. whn we have a sort of f ready supppy of somethingng, where you can, like, generate the numbers you need for replicatable research, and you can kind of foster that commercial andnd research partnership, dan really jumped on that. you know, he and i met, and he took up that cause enthusia