Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: Toxic algae delays Dungeness crab season

January 19, 2017 — As expected, the opening of the commercial fishing season for California’s treasured Dungeness crab will be later than usual.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Friday evening announced that,  because of a toxic algal bloom that could be related to warm temperatures brought by El Niño, the start of the commercial season will be later than the traditional Nov. 15 date.

This follows the delay in the recreational fishery announced by the California Fish and Game Commission on Thursday, and a Wednesday afternoon announcement that the California Department of Public Health had recommended that people not eat any California-caught Dungeness or rock crab until further notice.

“Crab is an important part of California’s culture and economy, and I did not make this decision lightly,” said fish and wildlife agency director Charlton H. Bonham in a statement. “But doing everything we can to limit the risk to public health has to take precedence.”

According to a public health agency spokesman, the agency will continue collecting samples up and down the California coast on a weekly basis. “Once the levels of [the toxic algae] decline in the coastal waters, we usually start seeing the levels of domoic acid in bivalve shellfish (i.e., mussels and clams) and small finfish (i.e., anchovies and sardines) start to decline. Crustaceans such as Dungeness and rock crab are usually the last animals to flush the domoic acid out of their systems.”

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

California wildlife agency backs deep sea protections

December 5th, 2016 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has given preliminary support to a plan to protect more than 16,000 square miles of deep ocean habitat off of Southern California, while reopening nearly 3,000 square miles of rockfish conservation area to fishing.

The plan, proposed by the marine nonprofit Oceana, was one of the alternatives that the Pacific Fishery Management Council considered as it reviewed West Coast groundfish management plans in late November.

“With the inclusion of the proposed modifications, CDFW tentatively supports Oceana’s proposal south of Point Conception,” the fish and wildlife department wrote in its comment letter to the council.

It noted, however, that the plan requires more review and input from fishermen, scientists and other interested people, and suggested minor revisions to the closure map.

“We were pretty thrilled to hear that the state of California identified that proposal that we submitted as their preferred option,” said Geoff Shester, California campaign director for Oceana. “The idea is that we’re trying to freeze the footprint, and protect areas that are not yet developed.”

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages U.S. fisheries from the edge of state waters to 200 nautical miles offshore, is updating its essential fish habitat for West Coast groundfish, including rockfish and other species.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union Tribune 

California’s Coastal Ecosystem and Fisheries Are in the Grip of a Huge Climate Disruption

November 1, 2016 — In the shallow waters off Elk, in Mendocino County, a crew from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife dived recently to survey the area’s urchin and abalone populations. Instead of slipping beneath a canopy of leafy bull kelp, which normally darkens the ocean floor like a forest, they found a barren landscape like something out of “The Lorax.”

A single large abalone scaled a bare kelp stalk, hunting a scrap to eat, while urchins clustered atop stark gray stone that is normally striped in colorful seaweed.

“When the urchins are starving and are desperate, they will the leave the reef as bare rock,” said Cynthia Catton, an environmental scientist with Fish and Wildlife. Warm seawater has prevented the growth of kelp, the invertebrates’ main food source, so the urchins aren’t developing normally; the spiky shells of many are nearly empty. As a result, North Coast sea urchin divers have brought in only one-tenth of their normal haul this year.

The plight of urchins, abalones and the kelp forest is just one example of an extensive ongoing disruption of California’s coastal ecosystem — and the fisheries that depend on it — after several years of unusually warm ocean conditions and drought. Earlier this month, The Chronicle reported that scientists have discovered evidence in San Francisco Bay and its estuary of what is being called the planet’s sixth mass extinction, affecting species including chinook salmon and delta smelt.

Baby salmon are dying by the millions in drought-warmed rivers while en route to the ocean. Young oysters are being deformed or killed by ocean acidification. The Pacific sardine population has crashed, and both sardines and squid are migrating to unusual new places. And Dungeness crab was devastated last year by an unprecedented toxic algal bloom that delayed the opening of its season for four months.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle

Dungeness Crab From Sonoma Coast Deemed Safe to Eat

BERKLEY, Calif. (March 22, 2016) — Dungeness crabs caught off the coast of California south of the Mendocino-Sonoma County line have been deemed safe for consumption, California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials announced Friday. Recent tests showed that domoic acid levels in crabs in the area no longer pose a risk to human health, prompting state officials to lift a closure of the recreational Dungeness crab fishery.

Additionally, a closure of the commercial Dungeness crab fishery in the area will also be lifted on March 26, according to the CDFW. Closure for the Dungeness crab commercial and recreational fisheries north of the Mendocino-Sonoma County line remain in effect. Commercial and recreational rock crab fisheries, however, remain closed north of San Simeon, as well as in state waters around San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands, CDFW officials said.

The commercial crab season was initially scheduled to start Nov. 17, but remained closed after public health officials determined crabs had high levels of domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can be harmful to humans if eaten. Domoic acid is caused by an algal bloom.

Read the full story at the Berkley Patch. 

Crab season: Fishermen scrambling to pay bills

November 16, 2015 — This was supposed to be the winter Braeden Breton finally realized his dream of running his own crab fishing boat. After putting down $7,500 in April toward a commercial permit, he was counting on earning enough money as a deckhand this fall to pay off the rest and begin setting his own traps after the new year.

Now the indefinite postponement of the commercial Dungeness crab season has thrown that plan into disarray. Like hundreds of other fishermen in the Bay Area, Breton finds himself scrambling to pay the bills.

Breton, of El Granada, and a partner must make monthly payments on the $20,000 they still owe for the permit. He may head north this month in the hope of finding work on a boat in Oregon, where the Dungeness crab season is tentatively slated to open Dec. 1 on the northern half of the coast.

“It’s hard on everyone around me, and it’s hard on me as well,” Breton, 23, said of the delay. “I have to keep up with my payments or I’ll lose my permit.”

More than a week after the California Department of Fish and Wildlife shut down the commercial season because of high levels of neurotoxins in the crab, the outlook for California fishermen is as murky as the ocean depths where the prized crustaceans scuttle and scavenge.

Read the full story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel