The main diet of the abalone is algae and seaweed, conveniently grown in the Pacific ocean just off the shores of the farm. If you from the North California Coast  overlooking the ocean, you will see a light brown haze over the water, just a couple hundred yards off the shore’s edge. That is the algae and seaweed used by the farmer to feed the abalone through all its stages of growth. In the early stages of infancy, the algae is fed through a tube into the tanks, and in the later stages, the seaweed is fed whole. The abundant and fast growing seaweed is this ocean bed of nutrition, that the abalone farmers never even have to go below the surface of the water to collect the algae. They just snip off the top 5 inches, collecting less than 10% of the available crop. And it’s a wonder they even take 10% of the kelp. It grows back at the rate of 1 inch per hour