The tropical abalone, Haliotis asinina, is an ideal species to investigate the molecular mechanisms that control development, growth, reproduction and shell formation in all cultured haliotids. Here we describe the analysis of 232 expressed sequence tags (EST) obtained from a developmental H. asinina cDNA library intended for future microarray studies. From this data set we identified 183 unique gene clusters. Of these, 90 clusters showed significant homology with sequences lodged in GenBank, ranging in function from general housekeeping to signal transduction, gene regulation and cell-cell communication. Seventy-one clusters possessed completely novel ORFs greater than 50 codons in length, highlighting the paucity of sequence data from molluscs and other lophotrochozoans. This study of developmental gene expression in H. asinina provides the foundation for further detailed analyses of abalone growth, development and reproduction.