Saving Seafood

New rules for California Dungeness crab fleet seek fewer whale entanglements

May 18, 2020 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Friday unveiled a batch of complex new rules designed to reduce the risk to endangered whales and sea turtles of becoming entangled in commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear.

The draft regulations are set to be finalized before the next commercial season starts in November after a period of public review.

They expand on a framework established under a legal settlement reached last year that allows for the state’s $60-million-a-year crab fishery to be delayed or closed when surveys and other observations suggest a high risk of concentrated fishing gear and marine life overlapping in the same place. The new rules are meant to allow more nuanced risk assessment and precise management actions rather than the closure of large swaths of ocean, as seen in recent seasons.

Among the provisions are options to restrict fishing in certain depths, require crabbers to set only a share of the traps for which they’re permitted or limit intervention to any of six newly established geographic zones, rather than the larger Northern and Central California management districts that currently exist.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

California Dungeness crabbers protest early shutdown

April 29, 2020 — California state officials are ordering an early end to the southern Dungeness crab season May 15 to protect migrating whales, a move fishing advocates say is out of proportion to the actual risk.

In an April 15 notice Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, announced the Dungeness season would close and all gear pulled by mid-May, two months early, south of the Mendocino-Sonoma County line.

The decision comes as the fishery is winding down, with the California fleet gearing up for a promising salmon season that opens May 1. But it cuts off a sector that is providing jobs and seafood in coastal communities hit hard by coronavirus restrictions and their economic impact, said Ben Platt, president of the California Coast Crab Association.

“They say that there’s ‘significant risk.’ But the whale working group determined there was low risk, as they have in all of the recommendations this season,” said Platt, referring to a stakeholder advisory group established in 2015 to assess seasonal risks of gear entanglement.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

California crab fishery to close in May to protect whales

April 27, 2020 — Commercial fishermen are protesting an order by California wildlife authorities to close the Dungeness crab fishery in mid-May to protect whales and sea turtles from becoming entangled in fishing gear.

There have been no confirmed interactions between commercial Dungeness crab gear and any whales during the current crab season, which began in December, Ben Platt, president of the Crescent City-based California Coast Crab Association, said in a statement.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham on Wednesday ordered the fishery to close on May 15 for the remainder of the season south of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line, which is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of San Francisco.

Acknowledging challenges facing the commercial fishing industry during the coronavirus pandemic, the department said the decision “provides additional time on the water while balancing the need to protect whales and turtles.”

Read the full story at The North Bay Business Journal

California closes Dungeness crab fishery early

April 24, 2020 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has announced an early closure to the Dungeness crab fishery south of the Sonoma/Mendocino county line to protect whales and sea turtles from being entangled in fishing gear.

According to the official declaration, the decision co close the fishery on 15 May was made to protect humpback whales, whose migratory path is through the central management area of the fishery.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

California Crab Fishery to Close in May to Protect Whales

April 24, 2020 — Commercial fishermen are protesting an order by California wildlife authorities to close the Dungeness crab fishery in mid-May to protect whales and sea turtles from becoming entangled in fishing gear.

There have been no confirmed interactions between commercial Dungeness crab gear and any whales during the current crab season, which began in December, Ben Platt, president of the Crescent City-based California Coast Crab Association, said in a statement.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham on Wednesday ordered the fishery to close on May 15 for the remainder of the season south of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line, which is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of San Francisco.

Acknowledging challenges facing the commercial fishing industry during the coronavirus pandemic, the department said the decision “provides additional time on the water while balancing the need to protect whales and turtles.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Restaurant Closures Put Oregon Seafood Industry In Limbo

April 15, 2020 — Commercial fisherman Clint Funderburg should be on the ocean right now, catching Dungeness crab on his fishing boat, the Widgeon. Instead, he’s in his shop in Newport, and his boat is parked at the dock — likely until June.

When crab prices tanked a few weeks ago, he shifted gears to his off-season side gig. So, he’s building a refrigeration system for one of the many fishing boats that are stuck at the dock right now.

The coronavirus pandemic dealt its first blow to the West Coast fishing fleet back in January, cutting off lucrative live crab sales to China for the Chinese New Year.

From there, things only got worse as the virus spread across the globe and restaurants everywhere closed their dining rooms. This time of year, Funderburg would normally be getting $7 or $8 a pound for Dungeness crab. When it got down to just $2 a pound last month, he gave up.

“The company was starting to lose money,” he said. “We just quit fishing, called it a season. There are very few people left fishing. You know, you basically can’t hardly get rid of the crab. Normally, we would crab through May, and a lot of the guys do. Especially the smaller boats count on March, April, May to really make their seasons.”

Read the full story at OPB

CALIFORNIA: Humboldt Bay crab fishing season ‘devastated’ by COVID-19

March 26, 2020 — Crab fishing in Humboldt County has seen better days, but it’s never been as bad as this, several fishermen said Tuesday.

“We could use one word: it’s devastating,” said Harrison Ibach, president of the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association. “Everything has come to a screaming halt. And it’s not just the crab industry, it’s the entire seafood industry.”

Ibach and others estimated that the best market price for a pound of crab in Humboldt County — from the few buyers left — stands around $2 per pound, down from $3 at the start of this year’s season. For Ibach, “that’s the lowest I’ve seen in many, many years.”

The crabbing season naturally slows down in March, but the global coronavirus pandemic has brought unprecedented new levels of decline to the industry, fishermen said. It started when China — a top shipping location for live crabs — stopped taking in product from Humboldt Bay fishermen after the virus began wreaking havoc in the country.

In the couple of months that followed, the domestic market has similarly plummeted. Now that the ongoing statewide shelter-in-place order has closed most restaurants, almost no one in Humboldt County is buying crab.

Read the full story at The Times-Standard

West Coast Dungeness Crab Stable or Increasing Even With Intensive Harvest, Research Shows

March 5, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The West Coast Dungeness crab fishery doesn’t just support the most valuable annual harvest of seafood on the West Coast. It’s a fishery that just keeps on giving.

Fishermen from California to Washington caught almost all the available legal-size male Dungeness crab each year in the last few decades. However, the crab population has either remained stable or continued to increase, according to the first thorough population estimate of the West Coast Dungeness stocks.

“The catches and abundance in Central California especially are increasing, which is pretty remarkable to see year after year,” said Kate Richerson, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Richerson is the lead author of the new study published in the journal Fisheries Research. “There’s reason to be optimistic that this fishery will continue to be one of the most productive and on the West Coast.”

Other recent research has suggested that the West Coast’s signature shellfish could suffer in the future from ocean acidification and other effects related to climate change. That remains a concern, Richerson said, but the study did not detect obvious signs of population-level impacts yet.

Read the full release here

After 2017 Lawsuit, Fewer Whales Entangled As Crab Fishers Face Financial Struggle

February 14, 2020 — The Dungeness crab fishery in California recently shut down months early after a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) that required crab fishers to pull their gear out of the water with only 3 weeks notice. A settlement agreement was reached in March 2019, which included an early closure for the 2018-2019 Dungeness crab fishing season. Fishing gear is a serious threat to whales that live in, and migrate through, California waters. The California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, convened by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), informs regulators on ways in which to minimize entanglement risks and protect whales.

Why have there more whale entanglements recently?

According to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications climate change could be responsible. According to lead researcher Jarrod Santora, warming events in recent years, combined with recovering whale populations cause whales to come in contact with crab fishing gear more regularly.

Crab season in California occurs between November and mid-July. Warming events in 2014-2016 caused an increase in the marine algae Pseudo-nitzschia which produce the neurotoxin domoic acid (the toxin causes shellfish poisoning in humans). In 2016, high levels of toxins delayed the crab season until March. In addition, the warmer waters changed feeding habits of humpback whales, steering them closer to shore where food was more prevalent. This perfect storm of events led to a sharp spike in observed whale entanglements in 2017. 70% of the whale entanglements reported in 2017 in the United States involved fishing gear.

Read the full story at Forbes

The Pacific Ocean is so acidic that it’s dissolving Dungeness crabs’ shells

January 28, 2020 — The Pacific Ocean is becoming more acidic, and the cash-crabs that live in its coastal waters are some of its first inhabitants to feel its effects.

The Dungeness crab is vital to commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, but lower pH levels in its habitat are dissolving parts of its shell and damaging its sensory organs, a new study found.

Their injuries could impact coastal economies and forebode the obstacles in a changing sea. And while the results aren’t unexpected, the study’s authors said the damage to the crabs is premature: The acidity wasn’t predicted to damage the crabs this quickly.

“If the crabs are affected already, we really need to make sure we pay much more attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late,” said study lead author Nina Bednarsek, a senior scientist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project.

The findings were published this month in the journal Science of the Total Environment and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The agency studies ocean acidification and how changing pH levels are impacting coasts.

Read the full story at CNN