FORT BRAGG, CA., 11/14/26 — Asked which seafoods they wish they could eat more often, people answering a Fort Bragg survey put red abalone in the top three.
The survey was part of a city study to see what could be farmed in Noyo Harbor. The study tried raising red abalone in the Noyo River twice. Both times the abalone lived until winter rain sent fresh water down the river. Both times every one of them died.
People can’t go get their own. The state Fish and Game Commission voted in December 2025 to keep the recreational red abalone fishery closed until April 1, 2036. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife says the population fell about 85% after the kelp forests collapsed in 2014.
The first batch, 23 abalone, went into the river Jan. 22, 2025. On Feb. 3 the river ran with mud, and the salt at the bottom dropped to zero. Those abalone came out of the water dead on Feb. 4.
The second batch lasted longer. For seven months in 2025, 43 young red abalone lived in a basket hanging in the river, eating dried seaweed and growing. Their shells went from about 1.5 inches across to about 1.8 inches. On Dec. 15 all of them were alive.
Fresh water poured down the river in the third week of December. For two days, Dec. 21 and 22, the salt at the bottom of the river fell to zero. By Christmas Eve all 43 were dead.
The account comes from a draft the city of Fort Bragg posted online Sept. 27. It’s the Noyo Harbor Aquaculture Feasibility Study, which the city ran with California Sea Grant and the Noyo Center for Marine Science. The draft calls itself “a small-scale, proof-of-concept analysis.” It blames winter rain for the deaths.
Along with red abalone, the study tested Pacific oysters, purple sea urchins and bull kelp in the river. The oysters did well: 99.5% survived at the Noyo Center, and all of them at Silver’s at the Wharf.
Tanks on land need seawater
The draft concludes that abalone can grow in the river from late spring into early winter, but would need to move to a land-based facility for winter and early spring. That means tanks on shore, filled with salt water.
“The region does not have a saltwater intake system,” the draft says. An intake is a system of pipes and pumps that draws seawater from the ocean to tanks on land. The Noyo Center’s tanks on land run on water pumped from the bottom of the river at high tide. In winter, salt is added.
The city studied an intake in 2021
The city has looked at building an intake before. In 2021 it asked engineers for proposals on a city-owned ocean water system that could move up to 600 gallons of seawater a minute. The intake would sit on the southern part of the former Georgia-Pacific mill site. On Nov. 8, 2021, the City Council approved a contract of up to $90,800 with ASA Analysis & Communication for the technical analysis. The contract called for the work to be done by Nov. 9, 2022.
On March 28, 2022, the council adopted a resolution approving a request for federal earmark money to build city ocean water infrastructure. Rep. Jared Huffman’s requests for congressional project money for fiscal 2022 through 2024 included no Fort Bragg intake.
No council agenda since then lists the ASA analysis, and no report from it is posted on the city’s website.
In January 2025, a Noyo Harbor District board report said the city was looking to apply to a state economic development fund for a seawater intake. “Sea water intake is the limiting factor for establishing on-shore blue economies,” it said.
The draft feasibility study doesn’t mention the 2021 work.
No coastal gauge recorded that much rain
The draft puts the Feb. 3 storm at 7.32 inches of rain. It puts the December storm at about 14.26 inches over seven days, 5 inches of it on Dec. 23. It doesn’t say where the rain was measured.
No rain gauge on the coast near Fort Bragg recorded totals that high. The National Weather Service cooperative station 5 miles north of town logged 3.22 inches for Feb. 3 and 4 combined. A volunteer CoCoRaHS gauge 3.5 miles south of town logged 2.42 inches over the same two days. In December, the highest seven-day total at any coastal gauge was 8.07 inches, at Caspar, and none logged 5 inches in a day. Daily totals near 5 inches fell inland, at gauges around Willits and Laytonville.
The draft also gives three accounts of how long the river ran fresh in February. The abalone section says the salt was at zero for two days. A figure caption says it was zero at times on Feb. 2 and 3, then from Feb. 4 to 6, “a 3-day period.” The sea urchin section says it was zero from 8 a.m. to noon on Feb. 3.
A separate Sea Grant project on a community-backed red abalone restoration is underway. The draft says “Insights from the study are coming soon.”
The feasibility study is one piece of the city’s Noyo Harbor Blue Economy plan, paid for by a California Coastal Commission grant of up to $898,990. The grant’s schedule called for the city to send changes to its Local Coastal Program to the commission by Oct. 15, 2026. The program is the city’s land-use plan and ordinances for the coast. The grant runs through Dec. 1. No City Council or Planning Commission agenda posted through Wednesday, and no Coastal Commission agenda through November, lists those changes.
Questions about the rainfall figures, the Oct. 15 deadline and the 2021 analysis went by email to the city’s economic development manager, Sarah McCormick, but she didn’t respond to questions by publication.