Survival of hatchery-origin juvenile pinto abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) outplanted to restoration sites in the San Juan Islands

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Puget Sound Restoration Fund, and other project partners have outplanted thousands of hatchery-reared pinto abalone in annual cohorts to ten sites in the San Juan Archipelago since 2009. We measured the “success” of each outplant site by the proportion of total juveniles placed that survived to a reproductive size. In winter 2017 surveys we observed a range of successes, from 0% at the worst site to 5.6% at the best. When nearby individuals are included, this success ranges as high as 7.5%. These percentages do not account for the probability of detection for a given abalone, which available information from tagged abalone suggests is between 20 – 40%. They also do not account for emigration from the sites, which has not been quantified. I’ll discuss these results, their implications for on-site reproduction, and their incorporation into an integrated population model describing the survival and growth of outplanted juveniles. I’ll also discuss the future of pinto abalone recovery, including our new strategy to “repeal and replace” low performing sites, optimize outplant efficiency, and scale-up restoration efforts to achieve population-wide recovery.