The Cultured Abalone Farm: The Local Tour Stop You Never Knew You Needed

A long-gone California pastime was catching abalone off the coast, but in 2001, white abalone became the first marine invertebrate to be added to the endangered species list, and soon after, all commercial and recreational capture of abalone became outlawed. But just a quick drive up to Gaviota, one can relive the past and see what the abalone have been up to at the largest abalone hatchery and farm in California. 

The Cultured Abalone Farm was first established in 1989 on the Gaviota Coast to raise native red abalone, though they also conserve white and green abalone. If you’ve had red abalone at a restaurant in Santa Barbara, chances are you’ve eaten an abalone raised at The Cultured Abalone Farm – Lucky’s, El Encanto, and the San Ysidro Ranch all serve their abalone, to name a few.

For this interview I spoke with Andie Van Horn, a recent UCSB graduate and The Cultured Abalone Farm’s tour coordinator. She’s got a peppy spirit and rocks an abalone-shell septum piercing and nautical-themed tattoos. Though she grew up in the distinctly landlocked suburbs of Sacramento, Van Horn spent formative summers by the ocean and in the woods. “I was always the one right up next to the ranger asking all the questions,” she said playfully.

Days spent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Bodega Bay deepened Van Horn’s appreciation for the ocean. Van Horn graduated in 2024 with a degree in aquatic biology and museum studies, and thus works as a farm technician on the farm, as well. Van Horn discovered the Cultured Abalone Farm while working at REEF (Research Experience and Education Facility), UCSB’s beachside touch tank. 

Van Horn has now worked at The Cultured Abalone Farm for eight months. From Tuesday to Friday, Van Horn helps maintain the farm – like distributing the weekly 20 tons of kelp harvested from the Santa Barbara Channel to the hungry abalone, monitoring their growth progress, and hosting tours for schools. Saturday is dedicated to tours for the public, though I had the luxury of indulging on
a weekday. 

Like crops at a traditional farm, The Cultured Abalone Farm is lined with hundreds of open, bubbling tanks holding over one million abalone. The abalone are grouped by size to promote an equitable biome where larger abalone can’t hog food. Each day, over 2.3 million gallons of saltwater are pumped through the farm’s tanks from a pipe 400 yards out and 40 feet deep in the ocean.

Van Horn first led me to the hatchery – tanks with abalone only a few months old – where I began the hardest game of Eye Spy. Smaller than half a grain of jasmine rice, Van Horn had to bring out one of the tank grates to show me the babies. Before I could gasp, she informed me abalone are intertidal, meaning they can poke their heads out of water from time to time.

Next we visited the intermediate abalone, which are bred for consumption and typically sold at three to four years of age. All visitors are welcome to hold the abalone, and I happily took the opportunity; I felt its sides – or epipodial fringe – dance in the shallow water collecting in my palm, petite bubbles popping from its nearly indecipherable mouth. With much effort, I peeled the abalone off my hand. They can attach to surfaces so tightly farm technicians carry paint spreaders to pop them off their tanks.

Finally, I got a glimpse of the brood stock, or older abalone tasked with spawning the next generation. “In the wild, abalone can live up to 40 years,” Van Horn went on to tell me. These abalone were bigger than the size of a baseball, living harmoniously amongst other sea creatures like sea urchin (uni), which The Cultured Abalone Farm sells alongside their abalone. By the end of the tour, I was cooing and cawing at the abalone like they were newborns. “See, that’s what happens: you start thinking abalone are cute, then they become your favorite animal.”

When I asked Van Horn what her favorite part of working at The Cultured Abalone Farm was, she said: “I take pride in keeping this species going and being able to provide them as a food source. Every weekend when we have tours, you hear so many stories of, ‘Oh, I used to go catch abalone with my dad, my uncle, my best friends. I’m bummed we can’t anymore but we’re all happy we can still have the food source.’”

In what felt like a betrayal to my new friends, I aptly ended the day by stopping at one of The Cultured Abalone Farm’s distributors, the Santa Barbara Fish Market in Goleta, and ate abalone for the first time. It definitely won’t be my last. 

Contact The Cultured Abalone Farm to schedule a guided tour, or order their abalone at their website, www.culturedabalone.com. Van Horn keeps their Instagram @culturedabalone, chock-full of stupendous abalone content.