| Abalone RAG Evaluation – Ground Truth Q&A | |
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| 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. | |
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| 2. Question: | |
| What is the typical asymptotic shell length for red abalone? | |
| Answer: | |
| Tag–recapture studies estimate asymptotic lengths of ~184–232 mm. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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%. | |
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| 9. Question: | |
| Why do pinto abalone suffer fertilization problems? | |
| Answer: | |
| Low densities cause Allee effects, reducing broadcast-spawning fertilization success. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 11. Question: | |
| What environmental factor directly causes abalone starvation events? | |
| Answer: | |
| Large-scale kelp loss from marine heatwaves and urchin barrens. | |
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| 12. Question: | |
| Why is post-release survival low in abalone restoration efforts? | |
| Answer: | |
| Predation, limited shelter, and physiological stress lower survival after out-planting. | |