One of a kind abalone farm in Monterey

“It really is a dream job, I love getting up every morning and coming to work,” said Monterey Abalone Company Co-Owner Trevor Fay.

At the end of Municipal Wharf Number 2 in Monterey is the Monterey Abalone Company, a small building that’s easy to miss.

“We’ve been at it for 24 years or for me 19, and we’re still learning new things every day. For our first 15 years or so, all we did was abalone, and we really learned to do it right,” said Fay.

Co-Owner Art Seavey has been with the company since 1994.

“Abalone are great animals to work with, they’re very easy to work with. People love them…people love to eat them. Some people just hold them in their hand and think oh they’re so cute I could never eat them,” said Seavey.

The company has a nursery in Moss Landing where abalone is hatched and raised until they’re ready for the farm here at the shop.

“Our farm is located underneath this wharf and we’ve built some walkways within the pilings and hang the cages underneath the water,” said Seavey.

And it’s there where they live a pretty easy life.

“Every week we pull up each cage, we check it for predators, we’ll hose it out with sea water and then we put fresh kelp in there,” said Seavey.

The abalone is raised until it’s at least 4 years old before being sold.

“Everything that we could produce is sold domestically right here in the US, and most of that right here on the Monterey Peninsula,” said Fay.

Wholesome, sustainable, and healthy!

“Whether you’re an oyster, a mussel, an abalone, you’re eating plants that grow in the ocean, you’re eating local plant production,” said Seavey.

Despite the name, the Monterey Abalone Company sells more than just the little sea snails. Customers around the nation want creatures from the Pacific, some for food and some for show.

“If you’re a land-locked aquarium like the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, your collectors don’t have access to the Pacific, so you call someone like us, send us your shopping list, we go out and collect it, pack it, and ship it,” said Fay.

But their main product is something that means more to people than just dinner.

“Every day we talk to people who used to dive or their father dived, and they remember big bbq’s on the beach or up on the north coast or here where they fished abalone or caught abalone and they had a great time with it,” said Seavey.

Now you can have those memories with no diving required.

“This is about as farm to table as you can get. Right from our farm to your kitchen,” said Fay.