Historic over-fishing reduced white abalone(Haliotis sorenseni) populations, resulting in their listing as an Endangered Species in 2001. Captive breeding efforts, led by UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, have increased production substantially over the past decade, but still fall short of the target 100,000 animals a year necessary for recovery. This shortfall is largely due to difficulties inducing gametogenesis and spawning. The diet of the H. sorenseni can impact the number of gametes they produce, and lipids have been shown to play an important role in larval development and survival in many marine invertebrates. This led us to explore the effects of a high lipid diet on abalone hormone levels by adding (seeding) a high lipid alga, Nannochloropsis sp., to their environment and collecting central nervous tissue (CNS) to measure the reproductive hormone, Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone (GnRH). GnRH regulates reproductive behavior and gametogenesis. Using an ELISA assay to detect GnRH, we observed that females increased their GnRH production while males decreased their GnRH production, in response to the high-lipid diet. In addition, we saw that the high-lipid diet had beneficial impact on body length under heat stress. Examining the environmental factors that stimulate the release of GnRH can prove to be useful for increasing production, as well as aid in future studies focusing on white abalone reproduction.