Gilroy
– A Gilroy woman died while harvesting abalone off the Mendocino
County coast, the first of three people to lose their lives
collecting the prized shellfish this week.
Gilroy – A Gilroy woman died while harvesting abalone off the Mendocino County coast, the first of three people to lose their lives collecting the prized shellfish this week.
Sheriff’s deputies said Selina Cheung, 60, was searching the waters near the Point Arena Lighthouse with a group when she died just after 7:30am Wednesday. Though an autopsy was completed Thursday, a Sheriff’s Office representative said the cause of death had not yet been determined. The day after Cheung’s death, two more people died while abalone-fishing nearby: Sam Boyd, 70, of Atascadero and a third man, unnamed by press time Friday.
Associated Press reports indicate that Boyd drowned, but Mendocino County authorities say it appears that Cheung didn’t.
Michael Jones, owner of Gilroy Scuba, said abalone divers risk getting tangled in kelp or suffering shallow-water blackout, a loss of consciousness that is sometimes linked to hyperventilation before going underwater. Abalone divers are banned by law from using a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus while harvesting the 8- to 10-inch mollusks, valued for their meat. Instead, two legal methods are used: rock-picking and free-diving.
Rock-pickers pry the shellfish from the underside of rocks at low tide; free-divers dive underwater to search for the fish.
Jones said harvesters often use a blunt foot-long abalone bar to pull the shellfish off rocks without cutting the animal’s foot.
“It seems we lose one or two divers every year off the cost,” said Jones, who did not know Cheung. Sadly, “it’s almost an annual thing.”
The Cheung family could not be reached Friday.
