The routine traffic stops in Sonoma County were found to be anything other than about three dozen illegally harvested abalone and live pond turtles as police found methamphetamine, authorities said.
The Windsor Police Department said in a social media post that one of its agents had stopped two passengers and the vehicle in the 700 block of Shilo Road around 10:30pm on Wednesday.
The driver was taken into custody as a 46-year-old Santa Rosa man who was on probation for a misdemeanor and allegedly had a prominent warrant in Lake and Mendocino County. Another passenger, a 35-year-old woman from Santa Rosa, also revealed to lawmakers that she had methamphetamine, which she owned, authorities said, and she was also taken into custody.
The search for their vehicles produced drugs, hypodermic needles and other related tools, authorities said. However, deputies also discovered unexpected aquatic areas: 35 live abalone, turtles in a pond in the northwest, wet clothing, and apparently used to pry abalone out of rocks, authorities said.
Windsor police said the man allowed to excavate abalone from rocks along the Mendocino County coast, near the town of Elk, for personal consumption.
Nicole Lee, a man and woman identified as Jason Ramos, was taken and booked at the Sonoma County Jail.
Red Avalon is a large, edible sea snail considered delicate. Harvesting these creatures has a long history for some Indigenous communities.
California coasts once featured the most Avalon species in the world. Black, white, red, green, pink, flat, focus. However, due to the slow reproductive rates, the population is thinned out due to overfishing, marine heat waves and other environmental stressors.
Fishing, catching or maintaining California abalone seeds was illegal except that red avalons from northern San Francisco were permitted during the specified period. But even that limited activity has not been permitted since 2017 to help revive the population.
“Illegal intake of abalone will harm the revival of population and recreational harvests,” Windsor police said in the post.
Avalon is a target for poachers and there is a massive black market that pays them a premium, Windsor police said.
Due to the condition of the abalone recovered from the vehicle, police said they were unable to return it to their natural habitat and would need to be disposed of. The pond turtle was handed over to animal control and later returned to the wild, police said.
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