April 14, 2021 — Gulf of Mexico crabbers are navigating into uncertain waters as the spring of 2021 arrives, in a year that began with a dearth of product.
“There’s nothing since Christmas,” said long-time crab dock owner Trudy Luke of Houma, Louisiana, U.S.A., whose family members also regularly harvest blue crabs. “The demand is so high that docks are throwing money out there. I’ve got a fisherman here who usually brings in 100 55-pound pans. Today, he brought in 10.”
February 17, 2021 — It was a hectic and hazardous opening weekend for commercial crab fishermen and the Coast Guard monitoring the fleet.
Commercial crabbing kicked off in Washington with a majority of fishermen dropping their first load of pots late last week for a 73-hour day soak period.
Fishermen reported encountering challenging conditions during their initial trips offshore with rogue waves, freezing rain and dense fog combined with usual turbulence of crossing the Columbia River Bar in boats loaded with crab pots.
Fishermen described the opening weekend conditions as “gnarly,” “brutal,” and in some instances “the worst they’ve ever seen.” One said he was simply grateful there weren’t any deaths despite some close calls.
December 18, 2020 — Scientists are on the lookout for an invasive crab species expected to move north into Alaskan waters. This year in Southeast Alaska, they added a new tool to the monitoring effort for European green crab, which is a threat to the state’s shellfish and salmon.
European green crab or shore crab have been expanding their range north along the Pacific coast. But this year they were discovered just south of the Alaskan border.
“This Haida Gwaii occurrence last summer puts them very close to us,” said Linda Shaw, invasive species coordinator for the Alaska regional office of NOAA Fisheries. “I really wish I could say we don’t expect them, but prudence dictates that we say, yes, we think it’s a matter of when, not if.”
In July, natural resources managers found male and female adult green crab in Haida Gwaii, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands.
December 10, 2020 — The following was released by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality:
The blue crab season closures will go into effect Jan. 1-31, 2021 in North Carolina state waters north and east of the Highway 58 bridge and March 1-15, 2021 south and west of the Highway 58 bridge. The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission approved measures to end overfishing and achieve sustainable harvest with the adoption of the Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3 at its February 2020 meeting.
The blue crab season closure replaces the annual pot closure period and will remain closed for the entirety. Pots of any type must be removed from Internal Coastal Fishing Waters (excludes ocean) during the season closure and possession of blue crabs regardless of harvest gear type is prohibited from all Coastal Fishing Waters (ocean and internal waters).
Season closures are necessary to reduce harvest because a recent North Carolina stock assessment for blue crab determined the stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring. Overfished means the population is too small. Overfishing means the removal rate is too high. North Carolina law mandates that fishery management plans include measures to end overfishing within two years of adoption and rebuild the stock to achieve sustainable harvest within 10 years of adoption.
Division of Marine Fisheries Director Steve Murphey implemented the new measures through Proclamation M-01-2021. Proclamations are available on the division’s website at http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/mf/proclamations.
Information on Amendment 3 can be found on the Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan Information webpage. For more information, contact division biologist Daniel Zapf at 252-946-6481.
December 4, 2020 — Regulators of Virginia’s fisheries have decided to extend the traditional crab pot season. And they say it shouldn’t have a big impact on the crab populations in the Chesapeake Bay.
The Virginian-Pilot reported Thursday that the Virginia Marine Resources Commission extended the crab pot season by 20 days, until Dec. 19. The goal is to make up for losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
December 1, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Natural resource managers in British Columbia discovered several adult male and female European green crabs on Haida Gwaii this past July. Alarm bells immediately went off for biologists in Alaska.
The archipelago of Haida Gwaii, off the coast of Prince Rupert in British Columbia, is very close to Alaska. The July discovery is the closest confirmed finding of the invasive crustacean since it was first detected in the San Francisco Bay area in 1989.
European green crabs were first introduced to North America in the 1800s, likely hitching a ride in the ballast water of merchant ships from Europe. Experts believe the invasive crab was transported to the West Coast in ballast water as well.
The green crab is considered one of the most invasive species in the marine environment. It has few predators, aggressively hunts and eats its prey, destroys seagrass, and outcompetes local species for food and habitat. It has been documented that European green crab devour juvenile king crab as well as juvenile salmon.
Read more.
October 28, 2020 — California officials on Monday, 26 October, announced new Dungeness crab fishing regulations designed to reduce encounters with several endangered species.
The new regulations, which will take effect on Saturday, 1 November, call for fishermen to lower the number of traps in areas where a higher number of whales or sea turtles are present. The state also reserves the right to close an area if an entanglement occurs.
July 23, 2020 — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reeled in a compromise after dramatic changes it proposed to stone crabbing made the industry snap.
After originally threatening to shorten the stone crab season by five weeks, the commission conceded to complaints in a virtually held meeting on Wednesday and shortened the season by only two weeks, with a new end date of May 1. The new rules go into effect Oct. 1.
The commission finalized its rules after hosting a series of virtual workshops since June with industry stakeholders, who widely criticized the agency’s original proposals.
On Wednesday, commissioners acknowledged that the new rules – even with a May 1 end of season – would succeed in keeping more than 300,000 pounds of stone crabs from being harvested, which should surpass the agency’s goal of saving 1 million pounds of stone crabs from harvest over a five-year period.
The compromise will allow stone crabbers to enjoy the economic benefit of Easter and Mother’s Day sales, said Bill Kelly, executive director of the Florida Keys Commercial Fisherman’s Association.
May 14, 2020 — In March, the closure of most U.S. restaurants just as the blue crab season in Virginia and Maryland was getting started had retailers, processors, and watermen afraid that the bottom would drop out of the market.
Initial reports in local media indicated that pricing was off, in some cases, as much as 30 percent, and the fear was that the fishery would be in dire straits.
April 22, 2020 — Larry Collins is a big, gregarious man with tobacco-stained teeth, a salty tongue, and the commanding presence of a sea captain. For 40 years he has earned his living as a commercial fisherman, slinging wild-caught seafood from a bustling warehouse on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Collins loves his profession; it has put enough money in his pocket to raise kids, buy a home, and save up for retirement in one of the most expensive cities in America. Sitting in his cramped office, with the smell of fresh fish wafting in from the docks, he talked about the days when more than 4,000 boats would head out from California’s ports each season and ply the waters of the Pacific Coast, trapping crabs and netting huge runs of Chinook salmon.
“I will give you the best salmon year in my whole career. It was 1988. We caught 1.4 million salmon in California, and another 800,000 escaped up the river,” he said with obvious nostalgia.
That era, though, is long gone. These days, the local fishing industry is a withered remnant of its former self. In 2018 “we caught maybe 175,000 salmon, and 80,000 went up the river,” Collins told me. “Fifty-three boats delivered 50 percent of what was caught.” While some salmon seasons have been much better than others, such as the robust 2019 season, “the fishery has probably been reduced to 5 or 10 percent of what it used to be.” Cut off from their ancestral breeding grounds by enormous dams, preyed on by invasive species, and deprived of the freshwater flows that are crucial to sustaining their populations, the salmon have suffered long-term decline and face an increasingly grim future.