The season was scheduled to open on Nov. 15 from Bodega Bay north of San Francisco to Southern California but will be delayed at least until after December, when the Fish and Wildlife director expects to take another look at whale populations along the coast.
“This is the first delay of the 2024–25 season,” Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist at the department, told The Epoch Times in an email.
A potential Dec. 1 opening for commercial fisheries depends on a risk assessment, the department said in its statement.
This is the sixth consecutive year the opening of commercial crab fishing off Central and Southern California has been delayed because of the risk to whales.
The state reopened the season on Jan. 18 to most of the state but allowed only half as many crabs to be caught this year, after restricting the season in November in Northern California.
Longtime commercial fisherman Dick Ogg of Bodega Bay said the latest restrictions affect everyone, including consumers, fishermen, buyers, wholesalers, and retailers.
“We’re providers of a resource that belongs to the public,” Ogg said. “You have no access to that unless we have the ability to go and get it, and we do it in a very sustainable way.”
The state’s restrictions on crab fishing were created after the Department of Fish and Wildlife was sued in 2017 by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit that supports environmental regulations.
The group sued over whale and turtle entanglements caused by commercial Dungeness crab fishing, claiming that they violated the federal Endangered Species Act.
The settlement two years later established restrictions for the industry.
Ogg, who lives about 54 miles north of San Francisco in the fishing village of about 1,200 permanent residents, has fished the California coastline for more than 50 years and has commercially fished for about 25 of those. He is also a member of the Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Marketing Association and serves on 13 state and federal committees.
The commercial crab industry has made several adjustments to stay away from whales, he said. In the past few years, the fishermen have tightened up their lines, shortened their buoys, and are in the process of creating their own gear that would eliminate vertical lines in the water.
“We’ve done so many things to minimize potential interaction, and we’ve done a very good job and we’ve maintained it,” he said. “We’re actively trying to do the best we can. We do not under any circumstances want to have any interaction with these animals.”
Fishermen have worked to keep entanglement numbers low but with the number of whales in the area, it is hard to avoid an accident, according to Ogg.
The recreational crab fishing season will open on time statewide on Nov. 1, despite a few restrictions in the San Francisco Bay and Monterey regions.
Recreational crab fishers between the Sonoma and Mendocino county line and Lopez Point in Monterey County will not be allowed to use traps when the season opens because of the presence of humpback whales.
“Currently, the time to lift the trap restriction is unknown,” Bartling said. “The restriction will be lifted once risk has abated based on whale surveys in those areas.”
In the past two crab seasons, restrictions were in place until late December or early January, he said.
Crab traps will also not be allowed south of Point Arguello, about 75 miles northwest of Santa Barbara near Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Traps are also not allowed in the Bay Area and Monterey. Recreational crab fishing can be done using hoop nets—a very popular way to fish for crab in those areas—and crab snares, according to Bartling.
Dungeness crab is the most abundant crab that live off California, according to the Fish and Wildlife Department.
The Dungeness crab’s population decreases rapidly south of Monterey Bay. Only an occasional one is caught in Southern California, where many other species of crab are caught and sold, including yellow crab, rock crab, and red crab.
Some sport fishermen do take rock crabs home to eat, but commercial fishermen prefer the meatier and larger Dungeness crab.
Oceana, an international organization that works to protect and restore oceans, commented on the state’s decision to delay the commercial crab season, saying whale entanglements remain a problem.
“The alarming number of whales entangled in California fishing gear is evidence that we need stronger, pre-emptive actions to provide whales with safe passage off our shores,” Oceana’s campaign manager and marine scientist, Caitlynn Birch, said in a statement on Oct. 26. “It’s heartbreaking that right now there are multiple whales entangled in Monterey Bay.”
Between May and Oct. 21, wildlife experts confirmed four humpback whales were entangled in crab gear off California, and 10 other whales were entangled in unknown fishing gear, Oceana reported.
The organization said people were working hard to reduce the entanglements, including closing crab fishing areas and shortening the fishing season, but whales were still dying, according to Birch.
“While the Department of Fish and Wildlife is developing a new regulatory package for the crab fishery, some elements pertaining to whale entanglement risk are being weakened, and proper gear marking, electronic vessel tracking, and pop-up fishing gear authorization are all being delayed,” Birch said.
The organization encouraged more action to speed up the protection of whales in California’s crab fishery.
