I TOSSED THE SNAIL on ice and, a few hours later, grabbed a seat on the sun-drenched deck of the Stewarts Point Store. This 138-year-old, two-story building ten miles south of Gualala is a local landmark, held together by rotting beams and rusty nails. It's one of only a few shops for 21 miles along Highway 1's cliffs and hairpin turns. That afternoon, a group of county deputies and I sat out front drinking sodas, listening to a man who can justifiably call this place home court.

Archer "Arch" Richardson, 59, leaned over a railing and smoked his third cigar of the hour. His great-grandfather bought the store in 1881, and it passed down through four generations until Arch sold it in 2004, after 20 years, to his cousin.

During his tenure, Arch used to keep a body bag behind the counter. He would whip it out when tourists came in during a heavy swell to buy permits or ask about coves. He'd shake his head, pull out the plastic corpse carrier, and ask them, "Have you ever seen the inside of one of these?"

No, the tourists would say. "Well," he'd reply, "you're not going to when we put you in it, neither."

Sergeant Eric Thomson, 40, of the sheriff's search-and-rescue team, knows all too well what happens when divers ignore Arch's advice. "The big danger is the temperature of the water and its remoteness," he offered. "It's not like Los Angeles or Huntington Beach, where you can swim onto the sand if you get in trouble. It's steep trails. People are parking their cars a half-mile away and hiking. There are a lot of rocky shores and not a lot of exits."

It's this same remoteness, Thomson said, that makes poaching so easy. Beaches are hard to patrol because they're often hard to get to, and harbors are few. "You get some commercial boat, an urchin boat, and they're not getting enough money for urchin," he said. "Well, they can send a diver down and pull up 300 abalone—"

"Why take silver when you're looking at gold?" Arch interjected.

"Then they drive down to San Francisco and pull up to a dock," Thomson continued, "and who's going to stop them there?"

Arch chomped his cigar and turned to me. "Go to Chinatown and see how long it takes to get in a bidding war over an abalone," he said. "See how much you can get. Don't sell it—you'll get arrested. But it'd be a hell of a survey."

The next day, I drove 100 miles south to San Francisco and did just that. Arch was right. In only an hour, cluelessly going door to door in Chinatown with the ab on ice in a Tupperware container, I found three interested restaurateurs, one of whom offered me $90 on the spot. No wonder Fish and Game officials feel overwhelmed.