Fishing season delay puts crab off the table for Thanksgiving
The predictions that local Dungeness crab won’t be available in time for Thanksgiving have come true: This year’s commercial fishing season will be delayed until at least Dec. 1 to prevent the risk of whale entanglements in fishing gear.
On Wednesday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the delay of the commercial Dungeness crab season for Central California, including San Francisco, from Nov. 15 to Dec. 1 after a large number of endangered whales were spotted in fishing zones in the past week. The delay was triggered by new rules established Nov. 1 giving the state the authority to close certain fishing areas when there is evidence of a certain number of humpback whales, blue whales or Pacific leatherback sea turtles in the area.
“While no one wants to delay the season, CDFW and the Working Group feel a delay is necessary to reduce the risk of entanglement,” said department director Charlton H. Bonham. “The fleet has gone to great lengths to be more nimble in order to protect whales and turtles, and the results are promising.”
The director’s decision followed a recommendation from the California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, including
fishermen, environmental groups and other stakeholders tasked with finding ways to prevent whale entanglements. The recreational fishing season won’t be affected and is due to open Saturday. Last year, the commercial crab season was delayed for a month for the same reason. The department will reassess the risk in midNovember and decide whether the season can open on Dec. 1 or be delayed further.
The delay affects fishing zones in the coast from Point Arena ( Mendocino County) south to the Mexican border. According to recent aerial surveys and other data collected by biologists from Oct. 22 to 29, there were 50 humpback whales reported around the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco and 25 in the Monterey Bay area, which both exceed the threshold of 20 whale sightings for a delay.
Whales can be injured or die when they get caught in the lines that run between buoys at the ocean’s surface and the crab traps at the sea floor. Normally by the start of Dungeness crab season in midNovember, whales have begun their annual migration south to breeding grounds in Mexico. In recent years, they have been lingering longer along the California coast, a development related to warming ocean temperatures that have resulted in a dislocation of the fish that whales normally feed on and a record number of whale injuries and deaths in fishing gear.
This year, there have been large shoals of anchovies near shore, such as in Half Moon Bay, where scientists caught photos of a group of humpback whales feeding in late October. However, a storm predicted for the weekend could change those patterns, some fishermen said.
“The theory is the whales don’t seem to know it’s fall yet. With the first storm, it might clue them in that it’s time to boogie south,” said Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.
Conroy, who is a member of the Dungeness Working Group, said his organization supported the delay based on the number of whales sighted. “If we had rushed to go fish now with the high number of whales in the area, and if we had entangled the whales, that ... could have resulted in a zone closure for the entire season,” he said.
Larry Collins of the San Francisco Community Fishing Association, though, wished the decision to delay the season could be held off until after the stormy ocean conditions predicted for later this week.
“If the whales do move offshore this weekend, there’s still time to open it,” he said. “Everybody needs the work. Everybody needs the fresh crab.”
The fishing industry is struggling from a lack of restaurant business income during the pandemic, and San Francisco crab fishermen and women were hard hit by a fire at Pier 45 that destroyed a storage area filled with the gear of an estimated twothirds of the fleet.
“There’s really not many of us left to access fresh, local seafood,” said Collins of the local fleet. “We keep taking hits after hits, and eventually there won’t be anyone.”
But the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation organization based in Oakland, said in a recent statement that the state should do still more to protect endangered marine mammals. The organization sued the state in 2017 over the issue, and now says it should push more fishermen to modify their gear to prevent deaths and injuries.
“It’s good to see California finally taking whale entanglements seriously,” said Kristen Monsell, the center’s oceans legal director, in the statement. “This new system should reduce the risk crab gear poses to whales and sea turtles. But we’re disappointed that officials didn’t do more to encourage a conversion to ropeless gear, which is the only way to truly eliminate the threat of entanglement for these ocean animals.”