Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: California closing Dungeness crab season to protect humpback whales

April 3, 2024 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is closing most of the U.S. state’s commercial Dungeness crab fishery on Monday, 8 April.

California’s zones 3, 4, 5, and 6, stretching from the Sonoma-Mendocino county line to the U.S.-Mexico border, will be closed at 6 p.m. on 8 April due to the presence of humpback whales in the area, with a 30-fathom depth constraint on traps going into effect in zones 1 and 2, which encompasses the rest of the state’s coastline north to the Oregon border.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: California’s commercial Dungeness crab season will end April 8 to protect whales

April 1, 2024 — The commercial Dungeness crab season in California will be curtailed to protect humpback whales from becoming entangled in trap and buoy lines, officials announced Thursday.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife said commercial crabbing will end April 8 for waters between the Mendocino-Sonoma county line and the border with Mexico.

The recreational take of Dungeness crab using traps in those areas will also be prohibited. Recreational crabbers will be able to use other methods, including hoop nets and crab snares.

North of the Mendocino-Sonoma county line to the Oregon border, commercial crabbing will only be permitted to a depth of 180 feet (55 meters), officials said.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

CALIFRONIA: Dungeness crab fishing season to end early for most of California

March 30, 2024 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced on Thursday that they will close Dungeness crab fishing early for commercial and recreational fishers, per a news release provided by OCEANA.

Fisheries using vertical line gear off the central and southern coasts from south of the Sonoma/Mendocino County line will have to close up shop. There will also be a depth restriction to prohibit fishing in waters deeper than 180 feet for northern California, per OCEANA.

These changes will come into effect starting April 8.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife found earlier this month that not enough is being done to protect humpback whales after completing an assessment.

Read the full article at KSBW

CALIFORNIA: Bay Area’s commercial Dungeness crab season can start officially Jan. 18 — with caveats

January 13, 2024 — The Bay Area’s commercial Dungeness crab season can begin Jan. 18, state officials announced Thursday, now that many of the migrating behemoths of the sea have safely made their way down the coast.

The decision comes after a series of delays since November meant to protect whales from getting tangled in fishing lines, and it comes with a key restriction: Fleets will have to operate under a 50 percent trap reduction.

“This management decision is a balanced approach that achieves two outcomes,” the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced. “First, this trap reduction will help reduce entanglement risk for humpback whales by reducing the amount of gear and vertical lines in the water. Second, the decision gets the commercial fishery open statewide.”

For commercial crabbers, it’s a late but welcome start to a season that may end early. They will be allowed to drop crab pots on Jan. 15 but not pull them up until Jan. 18. If last season is any indication, they may get three months out of what would normally be a five-month season.

Read the full article at the Mercury News

CALIFORNIA: Select Dungeness fishermen in California get green light to resume catch

January 7, 2024 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFWD) announced that the Dungeness crab season will open on Jan. 5 in zones 1 and 2, the Sonoma County line to the Oregon border. A 64-hour pre-soak period began on January 2 at 8:01 a.m. The delay south of Sonoma and Mendocino, zones 3-6, will continue to be restricted.

The commercial fishing season further south will remain delayed due to the concentration of whales observed along the coast, including a group of 58 whales feeding near the surface in fishing zones around San Francisco Bay.

According to the Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program (RAMP), the multiple delays in the Dungeness season opening were attributed to humpback whale entanglements and the high number of whale sightings. 16 separate humpback and gray whale entanglements have been reported in California, with four entanglements associated with commercial crabbing nets.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: Dungeness Crab Season Delayed Again, SF Crabbers Miss Holiday Haul

December 19, 2023 — For decades, fishers have earned a living selling Dungeness crab out of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. But many, like Shawn Chen Flading, have struggled over the last five years as the state has consecutively delayed the commercial season.

“Every delay is difficult. Right now, I have zero income as a fisherman,” Flading said. He told KQED that he’s been working side jobs to financially stay afloat.

The season, which has historically started on Nov. 15, is delayed until at least New Year’s Day to protect migrating humpback whales. Crabbers like Flading hope to catch the tail end of the holidays to recoup what they’ve lost.

This is also primetime for crab sales as many San Franciscans prepare festive meals that feature the crustacean as opposed to turkey or ham.

“It’s something people like to splurge on to create a feast,” Flading said. “But with the delay, we’ve lost all the holiday markets.

Read the full article at KQED

CALIFORNIA: California commercial Dungeness crab fishing season delayed

November 8, 2o23 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced a delay in the season opener for California commercial Dungeness crab fishing off the Central and Southern Coast to protect whales from entanglement.

The decision is based on a combination of excessive humpback whale entanglements in California Dungeness crab gear over the last three years and high numbers of recent humpback whale sightings off the central coast according to CDFW’s Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program criteria.

The recreational Dungeness crab fishery will open statewide on November 4; however, recreational crab traps will not be allowed for the Central Coast (Fishing Zones 3 and 4) due to the high abundance of whales.

Read the full article at the Triplicate

CALIFORNIA: California delays Dungeness season; next assessment Nov. 17

October 31, 2023 — California’s Dungeness crab season is delayed again past the Nov. 15 opening date, owing to high numbers of humpback whales observed off the coast, Charlton Bonham, director of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, announced Thursday.

 Bonham and state officials will reassess the risks of whale entanglements in crab gear on Nov. 17, with an eye toward a possible Dec. 1 opening. But luck has not been with crab fishermen in recent years, and this is the fifth annual season delay in a row. The fall 2022 opening was delayed three times, finally opening on Dec. 31 but with a 50 percent trap reduction through January.

This time the commercial fishery opening will be delayed in Fishing Zones 3, 4, 5 and 6. Meanwhile deployment and use of crab traps in any recreational fishery is temporarily prohibited in Fishing Zones 3 and 4, with a recreational fleet advisory in all zones, according to a statement issued by Bonham’s office.

“Large aggregations of humpback whales continue to forage between Bodega Bay and Monterey and allowing the use of crab traps would increase the risk of an entanglement in those fishing zones,” said Bonham. “We will continue to work with both the recreational and commercial Dungeness crab fisheries to protect whales while working to maximize fishing opportunity.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Reducing fishing gear could save whales with low impacts to California’s crab fishermen

October 2, 2023 — Sometimes simple solutions are better. It all depends on the nature of the problem. For humpback whales, the problem is the rope connecting a crab trap on the seafloor to the buoy on the surface. And for fishermen, it’s fishery closures caused by whale entanglements.

Managing this issue is currently a major item on California’s agenda, and it appears less fishing gear may be the optimal solution. So says a team of researchers led by Christopher Free, at UC Santa Barbara, after modeling the benefits and impacts that several  would have on whales and fishermen. Their results, published in the journal Biological Conservation, find that simply reducing the amount of gear in the water is more effective than dynamic approaches involving real-time monitoring of whale populations. There may even be solutions on the horizon that provide these benefits with fewer drawbacks.

“We were trying to figure out what types of management strategies would work best at reducing whale entanglements in the Dungeness crab fishery while also minimizing impacts to fishing,” said first author Free, a researcher at the university’s Marine Science Institute. “And what we found is that some of the simpler strategies, such as just reducing the amount of gear allocated to the fishermen, outperformed a lot of the more complex management strategies.”

Management falls into two basic categories. Static strategies remain the same regardless of conditions. These include gear reductions, season delays and early closures. Meanwhile, dynamic strategies adapt based on incoming information. These come in proactive and reactive flavors, depending on whether the change is based on surveys determining where whales are abundant or observed entanglements indicating where risk might be high.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

California seeks plan to protect whales and Dungeness crab fishery

December 3, 2018 — Crabs are a big deal in California as one of our oldest and most valuable fisheries. They are often a treasured part of holiday feasts and they supply jobs to coastal communities. Whales are a big deal, literally, as the most majestic, largest animals swimming off our shore. What the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has done in the past several years with our partners to prevent whale entanglements in fishing gear is a big deal, too.

California’s ocean waters are home to one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world, hosting a diverse assemblage of migrating birds, marine mammals, sea turtles, and fish and invertebrate species. Protecting the ocean is a high priority for Californians.

That is why our department is taking actions to protect the whales and our prized crab fishery. The department is working to create a conservation plan that will analyze the effects of crab fishing on whales, identify steps to minimize the risk of whale entanglements in the crab fishing gear, secure funding to implement the plan, and submit it to the federal government for needed approval.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle