Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/544

540 for fresh abalones yet in a dried state many are shipped to China. After being gathered from the rocks by the diver and taken into camp, the shells are removed and the abalones thrown into vats of salt water and left for two or three days. In this manner, the pigmented mantle fringe is removed and the meat preserved. The abalones are next washed in large tubs by means of wooden paddles and then cooked for one half hour in water almost at the boiling temperature not only for sterilization, but to give the meat the desired rounded shape. With dip-nets the Japanese workmen remove the abalones to baskets and

carry them to the drying frames, where they are laid out in trays in the sunshine. After four or five days, or longer, if the temperature falls, the partly dried abalones are cooked in water for the second time for one hour. Next they are smoked in charcoal smoke for from twelve to twenty-four hours, and then for the third time placed in boiling water mainly for rinsing. Now the} r are dried for a period of six weeks and after a final cleansing bath in luke-warm water made ready for shipment. During the process of drying the meat loses nine tenths of its original weight. While hard and tough, like dried beef, it may be sliced with a sharp knife and eaten with relish. When dried the meat brings from twelve to fourteen cents a pound for the green and corrugated species, and from eight to ten cents for the black abalone. Most of the dried abalone goes to China and there finally, at retail, brings seventy-five cents per pound. A camp of fourteen Japanese fishermen brings in thirty tons, or more, of the fresh abalone in a month. There is considerable business in canning abalone for the California markets as well as for New York and Honolulu. The abalone of Japan,