Commercial dungeness crab season remains on hold
Dungeness crab will make a December comeback in the northern part of the state.
Humpback whales have migrated out of the far northern waters in California, the state’s Fish and Wildlife officials announced, and crabs there have passed quality tests, which means the commercial fishery in Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties (Zones 1 and 2) can open Dec. 1. Southern Oregon’s season also will begin that day.
California’s traditional Nov. 15 start to the commercial season had been delayed by the risk of whales becoming entangled in crab pot lines.
However, that risk still exists from Sonoma County south to Lopez Point in Monterey — the region the CDFW calls Zones 3 and 4 — so commercial crabbing still will be prohibited in the Bay Area until further notice.
“Available data indicate high numbers of whales remain in the fishing grounds,” CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham said in a statement issued Friday night. “When data indicate whales have migrated out of the fishing grounds, CDFW stands ready to open the commercial season and lift the temporary recreational trap restriction in Fishing Zones 3 and 4.”
Weather permitting, the next surveys for those Bay Area zones should take place on or before Dec. 15, officials said.
In those zones, recreational crabbing is currently allowed so long as crabbers use hoop nets and crab snares rather than traps.
Since 2015, there have been delays in all but one commercial Dungeness season in the Bay Area. A toxin, domoic acid, that could sicken anyone who
eats the tainted crab destroyed Northern California’s 2015-2016 commercial season and created delays in other years.
In 2018, recreational crabbers had to postpone their fishing, but the commercial season began without a hitch.
In 2019 and 2020,
the fishing line danger to whales resulted in a crabbing delay of several weeks. The 2020 crabbing season was officially set to begin Dec. 23, but price negotiations between crab fleets and seafood processors delayed the start until early January of this year.