Abalone and Urchin Recruitment Modules - Van Damme State Park, Mendocino County - 2021-2023

An important facet of the Kelp Forest Monitoring project is sampling recruitment of juvenile abalone and sea urchins. Specially designed recruitment modules (RMs) made of stainless steel and filled with ½ concrete cinder blocks as habitat were bolted to the rocky subtidal reef at Van Damme State Park, Mendocino County, California. Twelve RMs were deployed at 10 to 12m depth in three groups of four in August of 2000. They were allowed to season for a year before surveys began in Aug. 2001. Each August, SCUBA dive teams collected and measured the organisms inside the modules. The data associated with this data file are the number and sizes of red abalone (Haliotis rufescens), pinto abalone (H. kamtschatkana), flat abalone (H. walallensis), red sea urchins (Mesocentrotus franciscanus), and purple sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). Data are presented in tabular format with a row for each RM each year. This data and metadata were submitted by California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Staff though the Data Management Plan (DMP) framework with the id: DMP000703. For more information, please visit https://wildlife.ca.gov/Data/Sci-Data.