Critically Endangered
Red abalone
Haliotis rufescens
Red abalone is a gastropod in the family Haliotidae (order Lepetellida) — Haliotis rufescens, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The red abalone's shell length can reach a maximum of 31 cm (12 in), making it the largest species of abalone in the world. The shell is large, thick, dome-shaped, and usually covered with barnacles, vegetation, or other marine growth making the color and shell sculpture difficult to determine. It is usually a dull brick red color externally.
Range and habitat
It is distributed from British Columbia, Canada, to Baja California, Mexico. It is most common in the southern half of its range. Red abalone is the largest and most common abalone found in the northern part of the state of California, United States.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Snails move on a single foot and feed with a rasping tongue. Island and spring species rarely recolonise once the site is emptied.
In crisis
Red abalone is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Haliotis rufescens, Wikidata item Q123631. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
