Brown signs law to save whales

California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Friday that he signed legislation meant to bring down the record numbers of whales getting caught in fishing gear meant for Dungeness crabs and drowning or starving.

The Democratic governor approved the bill that allows fishermen to collect abandoned and lost crab pots — the cage-like contraptions used to catch the crustaceans — in the offseason for a bounty, paid for by those who lost the gear.

Crab fishermen joined environmental groups in backing the legislation after federal agencies logged 61 reports of entangled whales off the West Coast last year, and 40 more by midsummer of this year, most of them off California. The prior average was eight or fewer a year.