Police snare live abalone, a turtle and meth during Sonoma County traffic stop

A routine traffic stop in Sonoma County turned out to be anything but as police found methamphetamine, about three dozen illegally harvested abalone and a live pond turtle, authorities said.

The Windsor Police Department said in a social media post that one of its deputies stopped a vehicle with two passengers in the 700 block of Shiloh Road at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The driver, a 46-year-old Santa Rosa man who was on probation for a misdemeanor and allegedly had outstanding warrants in Lake and Mendocino counties, was detained. The other passenger, a 35-year-old woman also from Santa Rosa, then allegedly revealed to deputies that she had methamphetamine in her possession, authorities said, and she was also detained.

A search of their vehicle yielded the drugs, hypodermic needles and other related paraphernalia, according to authorities. However, deputies also uncovered an unexpected aquatic trove: 35 live abalone, a northwestern pond turtle, wet clothing and tools apparently used to pry abalone from rocks, authorities said in a statement.

According to Windsor police, the man admitted to excavating abalone from rocks along the Mendocino County coast near the town of Elk for personal consumption.

The man, identified as Jason Ramos, and the woman, Nichole Lee, were both transported and booked at the Sonoma County Jail.

Red abalone are large, edible sea snails that are considered a delicacy. Harvesting these creatures has a long history for some Indigenous communities.

The California coast was once home to the greatest number of abalone species in the world — black, white, red, green, pink, flat and pinto. But abalone have a slow reproductive rate, and their populations have been decimated due to overfishing, marine heat waves and other environmental stressors.

For decades it has been illegal to fish for, catch, or keep any species of abalone in California — except for some permitted harvesting of red abalone north of San Francisco during designated periods. But even that limited activity has not been allowed since 2017 to help revive the population.

“Any illegal taking of abalone harms the population and the return of recreational harvest,” Windsor police said in the post.

Abalone remain the target of poachers, and there is an extensive black market that pays a premium for them, Windsor police said.

Due to the condition of the abalone recovered from the vehicle, police said they could not be returned to their natural habitat and had to be disposed. The pond turtle was turned over to animal control and later returned to the wild, police said.