Authorities say what was the routine traffic stop in Sonoma County, but police found methamphetamine, about thirty-twenty illegal harvests of abalone and a live pond turtle.
The Windsor Police Department said in a social media post that one of its deputies stopped the vehicle at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The driver, a 46-year-old Santa Rosa man, was suspended for misdemeanor and allegedly had an excellent arrest warrant in Lake and Mendocino Counties. Another passenger, a 35-year-old woman from Santa Rosa, then allegedly revealed to deputies that she possessed methamphetamine, which she said was also detained.
The search for vehicles produced drugs, subcutaneous injection needles and other related instruments. However, authorities said in a statement that deputies also discovered an unexpected aquatic smell: 35 live abalones, northwest pond turtles, wet clothes and tools were apparently used to pry abalone from the rocks.
According to Windsor police, the man admitted to digging abalone along the coast of Mendocino County near Elk Town for personal consumption.
The man was identified as Jason Ramos and the woman Nichole Lee was shipped and booked at the Sonoma County Jail.
Red abalone is a large edible sea snail and is considered delicious. Harvest these creatures has a long history for certain indigenous communities.
The California Coast was once the largest abalone species in the world – black, white, red, green, pink, flat and pinto. But abalone reproductive rates are slow, and its populations are destroyed due to overfishing, ocean heat waves and other environmental stressors.
It has been illegal to fish, catch or retain any kind of abalone in California for decades – except for some of the designated periods that allow the collection of red abalone north of San Francisco to be allowed to harvest. However, even limited activities have not been allowed to help restore the population since 2017.
“Any illegal use of abalone will harm the return of the population and recreational harvest,” Windsor police said in the Post.
Windsor police say abalone remains a target for poachers and there is a wide black market to pay them a premium.
As the abalone recovered from the vehicle, police said they could not be returned to their natural habitat and therefore had to be disposed of. Police said the pond turtle was handed over to animal control and later returned to the wild.
