Abalones at risk: A global Red List assessment of Haliotis in a changing climate

gangs, often linked to the narcotics trade, driven by high consumer demand [71, 72]. The man- aged fishery has been almost reduced to a footnote leading to widespread species recruitment failure. Although in 2007 this species was listed by CITES, it was withdrawn three years later owing to implementation challenges [72]. More recently there have been some successful attempts at stock enhancement from hatchery-produced seed introduced into kelp beds out- side their natural distribution (abalone ranching) [73]. All other species in this sector are of LC. Indo-West-Pacific. This sector includes all of the Indian Ocean except its western rim, together with Southeast Asia, East Asia and the islands of the Western Pacific. It also includes species that are non-endemic to Australia that occur there. There are 15 species (Table 5). Nine species are small to medium sized and widely distributed in tropical waters where they are not subject to mass exploitation and are classified as LC. However, two of these LC species, H. ovina, commonly called the sheep’s ear abalone and H. asinina, the donkey’s ear abalone, are commercially fished with some consideration given towards aquaculture, although their small size is generally not as attractive to the important East Asian market. H. fatui Geiger, 1999 (DD) is a recently described species for which there is insufficient data on its true distribution or on population size on which an assessment may be made. H. pulcher- rima (DD) is only known from empty shells despite its wide distribution across French

Fig 3. Abalone species assessed globally analysed by category. CR Critically Endangered; EN Endangered; VU Vulnerable, NT Near Threatened, LC Least Concern, DD Data Deficient, and showing the impact of commercial exploitation. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309384.g003 Fig 4. H. tuberculata (VU). Occurs in Europe & North Africa. Failure of fisheries enforcement. Reprinted under a CC BY license with permission from Buzz Owen, original copyright. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309384.g004 PLOS ONE Abalones at risk: A global Red List assessment of Haliotis PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309384 December 23, 2024 12 / 25