Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: Commercial crab season delayed again, set to start Dec. 1 north of Sonoma County

November 24, 2021 — An abundance of endangered whales still feeding off the California Coast has forced the continued delay of commercial crabbing off the shore of Monterey, San Francisco and Bodega bays, at least until Dec. 15.

The delay will help ensure marine animals don’t become entangled, according to state Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham.

The season will open Dec. 1 north of Sonoma County, allowing the harvest of North Coast Dungeness crab there to proceed on time, furnishing fresh crab for winter holiday feasts and an opportunity for some commercial crabbers to get some action even if they usually fish in areas that remain closed.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

 

OREGON: Crab season set to open on time

November 23, 2021 — Marine toxins, skinny crabs and contentious price negotiations have all had a hand in delaying the start of Oregon’s lucrative commercial Dungeness crab season in recent years.

Not this season — at least not yet.

For the first time in years, commercial Dungeness crab fisheries in Oregon, Washington state and Northern California will begin on the traditional Dec. 1 opener after recent preseason testing showed high meat yield in crabs across the region.

At the same time, domoic acid — and the diatom that produces the naturally-occurring marine toxin — seems to have almost disappeared from ocean waters off Oregon and Washington.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at The Astorian

 

Slinky pots and ropeless gear: next angles for whale avoidance

November 22, 2021 — With new regulations turning whale avoidance into a top priority in the Gulf of Maine and off California, front-line fishermen sat Friday for a panel discussion at Pacific Marine Expo on what the future may hold for trap fisheries.

NMFS and the state of California are looking to ropeless gear for lobster and crab fisheries as the long-term solution, but such systems are still in development.

California’s Dungeness crab fishermen are yet again cooling their heels in port, awaiting an updated assessment of humpback whale movements and an all-clear from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to set gear, once the agency judges the danger of entanglements is lowered.

In recent years the usual November crab season opening has been delayed as whales congregate to feed before heading south for their breeding season, said Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.

The 2020 season opener was delayed into December — and then complicated when fishermen protested what they considered unfairly low prices for crabs. A price settlement and agreed-on opener didn’t happen until January.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: More Whales Are Washing Up Dead on Bay Area Beaches. Why?

November 19, 2021 — Nineteen gray whales have washed up on California’s coast this year, and in many cases there were no clear signs of what killed them. Communities all along the whales’ long migration route are noticing a similar trend, and whale deaths have been above normal for the past three years.

Crabbers team up with scientists

Even as the scientists puzzle out what’s going on, there is some good news.

Back in 2016, there was a spike in West Coast whale entanglements — 48 of the big animals got caught in fishing lines and gear, some of them fatally. Of those, 19 were traced to commercial Dungeness crab gear. So the state worked with fishermen to try to understand what was happening, and what they could all do to prevent the problem.

Dick Ogg is a commercial Dungeness crab fisherman who got involved with the state effort. On a clear morning, with the sun just rising, Ogg maneuvers his boat out of the harbor in Bodega Bay. He’s been fishing these waters for more than two decades, captaining his small boat with two hired workers. He says he often sees whales.

Read the full story at KQED

Dungeness emerges as Alaska’s top crab fishery

November 4, 2021 — It’s hard to believe, but Dungeness crab in the Gulf of Alaska is now Alaska’s largest crab fishery — a distinction due to the collapse of stocks in the Bering Sea.

Combined Dungeness catches so far from Southeast and the westward region (Kodiak, Chignik and the Alaska Peninsula) totaled over 7.5 million pounds as the last pots were being pulled at the end of October.

Ranking second is golden king crab taken along the Aleutian Islands with a harvest by four boats of about 6 million pounds.

For snow crab, long the Bering Sea’s most productive shellfish fishery, the catch was cut by 88% to 5.6 million pounds this season.

The Gulf’s Dungeness fishery will provide a nice payday for crabbers. The dungies, which weigh just over two pounds on average, were fetching $4.21 per pound for 209 permit holders at Southeast who will share in the value of over $14 million.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

California Orders Delay In Start Of Dungeness Crab Season Off Northern California Coast

November 2, 2021 — State fishery officials have delayed the start of Dungeness crab fishing season from Monterey to Point Arena along the Mendocino County coast at least until just days before Thanksgiving, threatening to eliminate the dining favorite from your holiday table.

Last year, the Californian Department of Fish and Wildlife delayed the commercial crab fishing season shortly before Thanksgiving in order to protect whales and sea turtles.

On Monday, they delayed the season again, but this time the State cast an even larger net, including sport fishermen as well.

The delay is based on data from the state’s recently created Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program and has been put into place to protect the migrating pods of humpback whales off the California coast.

State official said aerial surveys on Oct. 18 and 19 counted 48 humpback whales along fishing zones in the area between the Sonoma-Mendocino line and Half Moon Bay.

Aerial surveys undertaken by NOAA researchers throughout October showed at least four distinct individual Pacific leatherback sea turtles also in the fishing grounds.

Read the full story at KPIX

ALASKA: Pandemic economy contributes to record Southeast Dungeness crab prices

September 28, 2021 — Southeast Alaska’s Dungeness crab fetched record breaking prices this summer. The size of the harvest was close to average, but the value of the crab was exceptional.

Southeast’s summer Dungeness crab season ended up being worth $13 million. That’s about double the $7.52 million average over the last decade.

The summer fishery brought in just over 3.09 million pounds of Dungeness crab. That’s slightly above the ten year average but well below last year’s near-record harvest of 5.87 million, which was the second highest harvest ever recorded.

Still, the average price paid for Dungeness crab this summer was a record breaker at $4.21 per pound.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

OREGON: Factors converge to make crab scarce on the North Coast

August 3, 2021 — It’s one of the most popular seafood items on the North Coast and a valuable local fishery, but Dungeness crab has never been harder to find, or more expensive.

At restaurants, portions may be smaller, prices are steep and crab may be off the menu completely this summer.

Seafood distributors, sellers and processors point to a number of factors that converged to create a perfect storm: the coronavirus pandemic, labor shortages, product shortages, supply chain issues and market demands. All have contributed to drive prices up from the usual $25 or so per pound to as much as $52.

“There’s a lot of theories and a lot of possibilities and a lot of reasons for things and it’s kind of, ‘Take your pick,’” said Tim Novotny, a spokesman for the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

Read the full story at The Astorian

Dead zones, a ‘horseman’ of climate change, could suffocate crabs in the West, scientists say

July 30, 2021 — As the Pacific Ocean’s cool waters hugged Oregon’s rugged shore, Nick Edwards, a seasoned commercial fisherman, could not believe his eyes. Stretching over at least 100 yards, he said, were the carcasses of hundreds of Dungeness crabs piled in the sands of a beach south of Cape Perpetua.

The remains of what Edwards deemed “the crème de la crème of seafood” — also one of the state’s most prized fisheries — are the most visible byproduct of a process that usually goes unnoticed by most beach-dwellers: hypoxia, or the emergence of swaths of low-oxygen zones in marine waters.

Hypoxic areas in Oregon, researchers found, have surfaced every summer since they were first recorded in 2002 — leading scientists to determine a recurring “hypoxic season,” akin to wildfire and hurricane ones.

However, climate change has exacerbated its effect, said Francis Chan, the director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies at Oregon State University, resulting in increasingly frequent and extensive hypoxic areas that can morph into “dead zones,” where the total lack of oxygen kills off species that cannot swim away, much like the Dungeness crabs.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Alaska’s Dungeness crab prices double, halibut and blackcod also on the rise

July 16, 2021 — Catches for Dungeness crab at Southeast Alaska are going slow so far for 163 boats, but prices of $4.20 a pound are more than double last year’s. The crab fishery will run through mid-August and reopen in October.

Kodiak crabbers were getting $4.25 for their Dungeness, also more than double.

Norton Sound opened for king crab on June 15 with a 290,000-pound catch limit. Concerns over the depleted stock resulted in no buyers and only one participant who is selling crab locally.

Prince William Sound’s pot shrimp fishery remains open until mid-September with a catch limit of 70,000 pounds. A lingcod fishery opened in the sound on July 1 for a catch of nearly 33,000 pounds.

Ling cod also opened at Cook Inlet with a 52,500-pound catch limit. The Inlet also opened July 1 for rockfish with a 150,000-pound harvest.

Read the full story at National Fisherman