Saving Seafood

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

CALIFORNIA: ‘Another Attempt to Industrialize the Coast’: California’s Central Coast Residents Work to Stop — or at Least Slow Down — Offshore Wind

October 17, 2023 — Joey Racano used to have a dining room table. Now the sunlit nook off the family kitchen more often than not serves as a conference room. The table is covered with maps, thick binders bulging with tech reports, towers of meeting minutes, abandoned coffee mugs — the accumulation of years of community vigilance.

On this day, his home is a lively place where a handful of locals are discussing one of California’s most complex and audacious initiatives — loading the Pacific Ocean with sprawling wind farms that float 20 miles from shore.

Read the full article at Santa Barbra Independent

CALIFRONIA: Bill Expediting California’s Offshore Wind Development Signed into Law

October 12, 2023 — California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signed two new offshore wind bills into law on 7 October. Coming into effect on 1 January 2024, the Offshore Wind Expediting Act (bill SB 286) is set to shave five years off of the offshore wind permitting timeline, while under the California Offshore Wind Advancement Act (bill AB 3), relevant state commissions will develop a second-phase plan and strategy for seaport readiness.

The Offshore Wind Expediting Act aims to put the state’s offshore wind deployment on a fast track by speeding up the permitting process through the State Coastal Commission and State Lands Commission.

The legislation also mandates state agencies and key stakeholders to collaborate and develop a long-term plan to deploy offshore wind infrastructure off of the California coast.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

CALIFORNIA: First permits issuing for California deep-set swordfish captains

October 3, 2023 — The first commercial fishing permits for using deep-set buoy gear in the swordfish fishery in the U.S. state of California were issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service 15 September, marking a milestone in the long transition away from large mesh drift gillnets off the West Coast.

Gillnets are to be finally phased out by 2027, replaced largely by deep-set buoy gear – vertical mainlines around 150 fathoms in length, with a flagpole outfitted with a light or radar reflector at the surface and a heavy sinker to keep the line anchored vertically.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

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 takes big first step toward floating offshore wind

September 27, 2023 — California has a goal of building gigawatts of wind power off its coast by the end of the decade. To meet that goal, it has to create a floating offshore wind industry from scratch.

Last week, state lawmakers took a key step in that process: passing a bill that would help California kick-start its nascent offshore wind industry by purchasing massive amounts of power from early-stage projects that might be too big or too risky for other potential buyers.

The passage of AB 1373, which Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has pledged to sign into law, is just the first in a series of steps needed to build the massive offshore transmission lines, port facilities, turbine manufacturing capacity and extensive supply chains needed to reach its goals. But energy industry groups agree that without the central procurement mechanism the bill aims to create, California’s offshore wind ambitions won’t become reality.

“This was the tip-of-the-spear issue,” said Molly Croll, director of Pacific offshore wind at American Clean Power, a clean energy trade group. ​“It doesn’t provide complete market certainty — but it provides much more market clarity than we had before.”

If signed into law, AB 1373 would allow the California Public Utilities Commission to authorize the California Department of Water Resources, which operates dams and aqueducts across the state, to sign contracts committing to purchase gigawatts’ worth of generation from yet-to-be-built offshore wind farms and then pass the costs on to all Californians.

Read the full article at Canary Media

Millions pegged for salmon, steelhead recovery

September 25, 2023 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is recommending sending $106 million to 16 salmon and steelhead recovery efforts in five Western states.

NOAA and the Department of Commerce recommended grants to state agencies with salmon protection missions, tribes and tribal partnerships in Idaho, Alaska, Oregon, Washington and California.

The funding “provides an important opportunity to bolster salmon and steelhead recovery and invest in the communities that rely on them,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

Read the full article at The Challis Messenger

CALIFORNIA: Half Moon Bay fishermen reeling from lost income amid salmon fishery closure

September 21, 2023 — Commercial salmon fishing season has been closed in the state of California for the past several months and fishermen in Half Moon Bay are feeling the impacts.

At Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point Harbor, it’s so quiet even the sea lions are bored.

“It’s quiet, you look at this harbor and it’s just empty, there’s no activity,” Porter McHenry, a commercial fisherman said.

McHenry says at this time of the year, from May to October, he would typically rely on salmon.

“There’s going to be nothing until crab season,” he said.

Back in March, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the drought from recent years limited salmon’s ability to breed and that there weren’t enough to open the commercial season this year.

Read the full article at ABC 7 News