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Abalone RAG Evaluation – Ground Truth Q&A ========================================= 1. Question: What is the geographical range of the red abalone? Answer: Red abalone range from British Columbia to Baja California, with historically dense populations in central and northern California kelp forests. --- 2. Question: What is the typical asymptotic shell length for red abalone? Answer: Tag–recapture studies estimate asymptotic lengths of ~184–232 mm. --- 3. Question: How long does it take for a red abalone to reach legal recreational size? Answer: Depending on environment and model, red abalone take 8–20 years to reach the ~178 mm legal size. --- 4. Question: What temperature range supports the fastest juvenile red abalone growth? Answer: Mid-teens to high-teens °C support maximum juvenile growth, with mid-size juveniles reaching ~0.1 mm/day. --- 5. Question: Who are the major predators influencing abalone population structure? Answer: Sea otters are the dominant predator; others include California sheephead, cabezon, bat rays, octopus, and crabs. --- 6. Question: What caused the collapse of the northern California red abalone recreational fishery? Answer: Kelp forest collapse, marine heatwaves, and urchin barrens caused starvation, recruitment failure, and fishery closure. --- 7. Question: Why is white abalone considered critically endangered? Answer: Historical heavy fishing and decades of extremely low recruitment reduced densities below recovery thresholds, requiring captive breeding and out-planting. --- 8. Question: How does heterozygosity vary among abalone species? Answer: White abalone has the lowest (~0.43%), black and pinto the highest (~1.0%), and red abalone around 0.95%. --- 9. Question: Why do pinto abalone suffer fertilization problems? Answer: Low densities cause Allee effects, reducing broadcast-spawning fertilization success. --- 10. Question: Why can the von Bertalanffy growth model be inaccurate for red abalone? Answer: It overestimates early growth; flexible models like Richards or Gaussian fit early growth better. --- 11. Question: What environmental factor directly causes abalone starvation events? Answer: Large-scale kelp loss from marine heatwaves and urchin barrens. --- 12. Question: Why is post-release survival low in abalone restoration efforts? Answer: Predation, limited shelter, and physiological stress lower survival after out-planting. |