Abstract
In October 2017, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development of Western Australia (WA) promulgated a new regulation on recreational abalone harvesting. A notable change was that, from 2017 on, the annual fishing season in the West Coast Zone was reduced to four days, from every December on Saturdays only. During the last decade, WA’s abalone fishing regulations have been overhauled frequently because of depleting local stocks. Worldwide, the marine heatwave resulting from climate change and illegal overfishing are considered the two principal reasons for abalone’s decline. Today, the highly lucrative abalone market has attracted more participants in recreational fishing in Perth, WA. Based on Asian natural heritage traditions and employing a multispecies sensory ethnographic methodology, this article provides an in-depth case study of the interaction between the local Chinese diaspora and the environment as represented in abalone harvesting practices. Between 2014 and 2016, the authors conducted one-on-one and focus group interviews with Chinese immigrants to Perth, WA, and also participated in abalone harvesting. The analysis reveals a suite of environmental influences on local Chinese diasporic life through heterogeneous forms of interaction between abalone and Perth-area Chinese immigrants.
Highlights
Abalone is a natural and cultural form of heritage
Abalone has been widely used by Indigenous people living by the seas, mainly in Australia, New Zealand, East Asia, and North America, as an important food resource
In Western Australia, as abalone has left the high altar of Chinese food culture and appears on the dining table of ordinary people because of its availability in the environment, the mollusc influences and embodies diasporic experience through its use in everyday recipes
Summary
This common marine mollusc has attracted scholarly attention, especially from the perspectives of food and ecology [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] Abalone is both a delicacy in Chinese culinary culture and a natural resource in the Western Australian (WA). The first focused on broad scales including the WA marine environment and Chinese diasporic movements in order to provide sufficient background for the analysis of the one-on-one interviews and auto-ethnographic material. In this way, the data analysis resulted in historicized thick description informed by nature-culture principles from the environmental humanities. The starting day is in December in order to improve safety in fishing during the better weather conditions
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