April 2, 2023 — California will cut short the commercial Dungeness crab season to protect humpback whales from becoming entangled in trap and buoy lines, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday.
Commercial fishing will end on April 15 from the Mendocino county line to the Mexican border, the agency said. It will still be allowed in the waters off Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
Recreational crabbing also will be allowed.
March 21, 2023 — A crab fisherman in the U.S. state of California has sued Pacific Seafood alleging it has “artificially suppressed” the price paid to fishermen for Dungeness crab.
The fisherman, Brad Little, filed the suit in a federal court in San Francisco, California, alleging he and 1,400 other commercial crab fishermen in California, Oregon, and Washington were paid lower prices for crab due to a price-fixing scheme perpetrated by Pacific Seafood. The complaint alleges Pacific Seafood fixed the price of crab through a “multipronged strategy of monopsonization, coercion, dumping, and secret deals.”
March 20, 2023 — Most summer mornings at first light, Jared Davis is a few miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, motoring his charter fishing boat Salty Lady over the Pacific Ocean. His eyes sweep the horizon, looking for diving birds, but mostly he watches the screen of his dashboard fish-finder for schools of anchovies — a sure sign that salmon are near. When the signs look good, he throttles down to trolling speed and tells his customers to let out their lines.
“Drop ‘em down!” Davis calls out the window. “Thirty to 40 feet!”
When the bite is steady, the Salty Lady may have 20 customers on board, each spending $200 for the chance to catch salmon. On the best days, fishing rods bend double the moment the lines go down, and a frenzy of action ensues, often amid a hundred or more other boats. Hooked Chinook thrash at the surface, and the deck becomes strewn with flopping fish.
Last year, California’s commercial and recreational fishing fleet, from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, landed about 300,000 salmon.
But this year, Davis and other salmon anglers won’t be fishing for salmon at all.
March 19, 2023 — Salmon season is closed for all of 2023. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says the drought from recent years limited salmon’s ability to breed, and now there aren’t enough to open the commercial season. Salmon fishers say it is a massive financial burden.
“We have crews that depend on us, we have families to feed,” said Sarah Bates, a salmon fisher based in San Francisco. “I am not exactly sure what we are going to do this summer. It makes me nervous.”
March 15, 2023 — A local crab fisherman has come up with a simple idea that could allow crab pots to remain at sea while keeping migrating whales safe.
Crab fisherman who also fish for salmon during the year are facing double trouble.
Several fishing industry representatives say the upcoming salmon fishing season will likely be closed the entire year because of low counts. A decision is expected within weeks.
Now the crab season scheduled to end in June could be cut short.
However, there is a proposal that could lengthen the next crab season that fishermen say addresses the ongoing issue of whale entanglements.
March 11, 2023 — The sight of his charter boat, Salty Lady, propped up on blocks in a Richmond boat repair seemed the perfect metaphor for Captain Jared Davis’ upcoming salmon fishing season — up in the air.
With the biologists in California projecting a record low return of Fall chinook – or King salmon – Davis’ prospects of getting to fish this year were about as empty as his nets.
“The numbers are pretty clear,” said Davis who operates out of Sausalito, “I don’t see how there could be any other options aside from having a completely closed season this year.”
Fishing regulators are likely to come to the same conclusion. On Friday, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council is set to release its fishing options for the upcoming commercial and recreational salmon seasons which normally begin in May. But most in the industry expect the council to recommend closing the entire salmon fishing season for the first time since 2008, and only the second time in history.
March 6, 2023 — With more bad news forecast for California salmon, several fishing advocacy groups called Friday for the state to impose an immediate closure of the 2023 salmon season and seek federal assistance for a fishery disaster.
In a joint statement the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Golden Gate Fishermen’s Association, and the Northern California Guides and Sportsmen’s Association said Gov. Gavin Newsom with the state legislature and agencies must ask for “disaster assistance funding for affected ocean and inland commercial operators.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife held its annual pre-season briefing March 1 “and reported some of the worst fisheries numbers in the history of the state. These numbers follow years of drought, poor water management decisions by federal and state managers, occasional failure to meet hatchery egg mitigation goals, inaccurate season modeling, and the inability of fisheries managers to meet their own mandated escapement goals,” the fishing groups said.
“Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point that we have been warning was coming; another collapse of our iconic salmon fisheries”, said George Bradshaw, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “The harvest models, escapement goals and model inaccuracies show there is no warranted opportunity to harvest chinook salmon in the state of California in 2023.”
February 28, 2023 — Delays in the season, half gear restrictions and low prices from a flooded market are some of the biggest concerns of the crabbing season from the fishermen out of Pillar Point Harbor.
Captain Mike Burian, who fishes under the vessel, Prime Time out of Pillar Point Harbor, bought a boat last year when it sounded like a good deal; however, his dream of running a profitable crabbing and salmon boat quickly turned into a nightmare after multiple delays in the season and various obstacles made it increasingly difficult to turn a profit.
“I always wanted to do this and someone was selling the vessel, pods and permits and I thought it was a good idea at the time,” Burian said. “If I did well, I was going to do it full time and fish for salmon as well; but, at this time, there is no way to make a living with this as far as I can see.”
The storm only made things more difficult because the high winds and waves buried some of the crab in the pots, suffocating and killing some of the crustaceans, he added.
“It’s a nightmare. I did not plan on this at all when I purchased the vessel, but if I don’t sell it I will be forced to do it again next year,” Burian said.
January 27, 2023 — In response to a petition by the Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity and Umpqua Watersheds, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined today that the Oregon Coast and southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Chinook salmon may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
“I’m pleased that Chinook salmon in Oregon and Northern California are that much closer to being protected under the Endangered Species Act,” said Meg Townsend, freshwater attorney at the Center. “These giants among Pacific salmon are irreplaceable icons of the Pacific Northwest. Chinooks bring important nutrients from the ocean to our forests, feed endangered Southern Resident orcas, and are a source of food and admiration for communities up and down the coast.”
Chinook are anadromous, returning from the ocean to the freshwater streams where they were born to reproduce. The Oregon and California Chinook salmon populations contain both early and late-run variants, otherwise known as spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon.
Spring-run Chinook salmon enter coastal rivers from the ocean in the spring and migrate upstream as they mature, holding in deep pools in rivers through the summer, and spawning in early fall in the upper reaches of watersheds. Conversely, fall-run Chinook enter the rivers in the fall and spawn shortly thereafter.
January 12, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service announced Wednesday that the Oregon Coast and southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Chinook salmon may need protection under the Endangered Species Act.
This comes as a response to a petition filed by the Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity, and Umpqua Watersheds back in August of last year.
The service said it will review whether Chinook salmon should be listed as an Endangered Species.
“I’m pleased that Chinook salmon in Oregon and Northern California are that much closer to being protected under the Endangered Species Act,” said Meg Townsend, freshwater attorney at the Center.