“On a sunny January afternoon in Bodega Bay, some 70 miles north of San Francisco, the White Abalone Culture Lab is humming with activity…

The researchers here hope that the 110 white abalone on the premises will successfully produce offspring. They’ll then nurse the marine mollusks until they’re big enough to be released into their native waters along the southern California coast.

It’s part of a 25 year effort to repair the damage from overfishing and other factors to the species. In 2001, the year the first artificial spawning program took place, only 1% percent remained – about 2,000 individuals.

If left alone in the wild, they were doomed to go extinct within a decade. The white abalone became the first marine invertebrate to be listed as an endangered species and a program was established to restore their numbers. Since the Bodega Bay lab opened in 2011, scientists have released over 20,000 animals into the ocean – a ten-fold increase.”

From The Guardian.