Like we covered in a post this summer, saving endangered Pinto abalone is hard in part because locating their habitat is time consuming and, as a result, expensive. It requires boats and dive crews in search of suitable locations, but a recent SeaDoc-funded project is looking for something more efficient.
Photojournalist Gemina Garland-Lewis has been following Dr. James Dimond of Western Washington University and his team this summer as they’ve explored a new method: bottling up water and testing it for the presence of abalone DNA to determine habitat. That would simplify things greatly!