Quick Take
The Central Coast Dungeness commercial crab season will open Jan. 5 with 40% fewer traps permitted, in order to reduce the risk of lines entangling whales. State officials and environmental groups say the restrictions balance fishers’ economic needs with wildlife protection as entanglements have declined.
The Dungeness crab season — one of Santa Cruz County’s most important commercial fisheries — will open on the Central Coast on Jan. 5 with restrictions, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced in a news release Friday.
Fishers from the Mendocino/Sonoma county line south to Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, including Santa Cruz County, are under a 40% trap reduction, which means they’ll be allowed to use only 60% of their crab fishing gear. That represents an increase over the past two years, when fishers were allowed to use only half of their equipment.
The restriction will limit the number of fishing lines in the water, and is aimed at protecting whales and other sea life from becoming entangled in the long ropes that connect the crab traps at the bottom of the ocean to buoys floating on the surface.
CDFW officials said opening the season with fewer permitted crab traps will strike a balance between the economic needs of the fishing industry and the need to protect whales still migrating through the area. Whale entanglements from crab fishing gear decreased in California this year, possibly due to similar restrictions imposed by fisheries regulators on crab fishing over the past four years.
“Hard work and sacrifices by the fleet have reduced entanglements even as whale populations have grown, and we appreciate CDFW for recognizing that progress and responding by opening the season with additional opportunity,” Lisa Damrosch, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, said in the release.
A representative from Oceana, a global environmental organization, also supported the gear reduction. “This is the right move to balance healthy fisheries and safe waters for wildlife,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist for Oceana, in the organization’s media release regarding the opening of the season. However, he pointed out that it will be necessary to remove lines from the water in the spring, when whales will once again migrate off the California coast, and advocated the use of pop-up traps for spring commercial crabbing.
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