By Mark C Anderson, November 6, 2024

In their first two years of life, Dungeness crabs molt as many as six times a year.

It’s an incredible feat to do once, let alone a dozen times: Grow your own body armor—and new limbs when they might snap off—then scooch out of it through the back seam, leaving old gills, antennae, and mouthparts behind, and burying yourself in the sand while your new superhero suit hardens.

As the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reports, “Since molting is such a tricky undertaking of physics, some percentage of crab will die during the process.”

If that wasn’t scary enough, during that time period between strong exoskeletons, Dungeness are super vulnerable, all soft, tasty and prime-target-material for octopuses, sea otters, halibut, rockfish, lingcod, sculpin and even other Dungeness crabs.

All told, it’s a process that feels relevant to the crab fishing industry itself.

As crabbing seasons, regulations and climate shift, often without much notice, crab fishers become increasingly vulnerable and must re-harden their ways to survive.

That saga encountered new plot developments recently, though they may take a familiar shape: Late last month the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) announced that the commercial season, historically set to open annually on Nov. 15, may not open until Dec. 1—at the earliest—depending on a reassessment of the risk of whale entanglements.

The affected area ranges from the Sonoma-Mendocino County line near Alexander Valley in Northern California south to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Recreational crabbers will be able to drop traps starting Nov. 2, with more specific restrictions in place in certain designated zones.

That marks the sixth straight season where aerial surveys by CDFW showed a high number of whales present off the California coast, thus raising the risk of entanglements with crab gear. In the past, a delay could happen over a price conflict, but now delays from the presence of whales represent the not-so-new-normal.

While that seems like more bad news for a fishery unable to crab chase like the good old days, there’s more to it than that.

For one, the delay represents a sign that California Dungeness Crab Working Group’s Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program (or RAMP) is achieving what it was designed to, as RAMP lead and CDFW scientist Ryan Bartling observes. With input from West Coast fishermen, environmental organizations, members of the whale entanglement response network and state and federal agencies, it’s successfully gauging and reducing the danger of ensnaring whales in vertical crab-pot lines by structuring the season accordingly.

“It’s doing what it was intended to do,” Bartling says. “I would go a step further and say the fleet’s now anticipating [decisions]. They know the data that goes into it, they get to see it before the [CDFW] director Chuck Bonham makes the decision, and they can read the tea leaves.”

For the 2024-25 crab season, a spike in entanglements—after a years-long stretch with very few, four related to crab traps have been reported this year—meant the closure was essentially predetermined.

Bartling is one of several experts interviewed for this story who agreed any opening before Jan. 1 would be surprising, this year and going forward.

“To be frank, a lot of time has passed since there was real anxiety and anticipation around the reality of a Nov. 15 opener,” he says. “We’ve moved beyond that. In the future it may be an option, but given the number of recent entanglements, it’ll be a hard place to get to in the near term.”

That predictability does offer some silver lining, allowing fishermen to manage prep and accompanying costs. In other words, it’s not so much the shortened season that messes with the fleet as it is the uncertainty.

Fisherman Don Marshall told the Trust as much as part of last spring’s “Crab Season Confidential: A Look Back, Current Realities and What's Next.” “There are too many complications and uncertainty around when the season starts and when it ends…” he said. “I’d like to see a hard start date, even if it’s Jan. 15, to allow whales to pass by, then make it a 60- or 75-day season with all of our traps. That way you have the maximum chance to make hay when the sun is shining.”

Nonprofit advocacy group Oceana took the announcement as an opportunity to flag the toll entanglements can take, and the opportunity to evolve management to prevent it.

“It’s true that many people are working hard to reduce whale entanglements—including by implementing time and area closures, gear reductions, and shortened fishing seasons,” Caitlynn Birch, Oceana’s campaign manager and marine scientist, said in a statement. “But it is also true that there are still too many whales dying entangled in commercial fishing gear and the current management system is not enough…We need to do more to strengthen conservation measures and expedite actions that protect whales and the future of California’s crab fishery.”

Oceana’s reps have been vigorous voices in support of so-called “pop-up” gear—also called “ropeless" and “on-demand”—which eliminates vertical lines in the water column and was tested last spring as part of an Experimental Fishing Permit (EFP) trial when whales returned and the conventional season concluded.

Sub Sea Sonics, Guardian Ropeless Systems and Sustainable Seas Technology published results celebrating successful trials for 19 fishermen working out of San Francisco, Bodega Bay, Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz and Moss Landing ports.

They counted 277 fishing trips, 2,361 strings of gear, 23,048 traps that proved 98% reliable, 229,000 pounds of crab landed, with an estimated value of about $1.6 million.

Lisa Damrosch, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA), sounds a few fair warnings around such stats—including the fact companies who make the new traps are incentivized to return positive findings.

“PCFFA has agreed with the fleet position that accountability and oversight should be built into EFP terms and conditions to avoid any conflict of interest issues on reporting,” she writes by email.

The CDFW hasn’t put out any public report on the success—or lack thereof—with pop-up crab traps. But today (Wednesday, Nov. 6), its Marine Resources Committee, an advisory subgroup of the Fish and Game Commission, will convene, with staff offering a rundown of results.

San Francisco-based fisherman Brand Little was among the 19 participating crabbers, and provided some predictions on what the committee will report.

“For me, it was great,” he says. “If all the other 20 participants were honest, they’d say it was great as well.”

He also notes post-spring crabbing is a supplement to the main season. As he told the Trust for the “Crab Confidential” piece, “I don’t think pop up gear can work as a career: It slows me down four- to five-fold, and is expensive, but our opportunity for conventional [crabbing] now is a short winter fishery that might last 60-80 days. That’s not enough, and this lets me at least have a part time spring job without working at McDonald’s.

“I can’t live on it, but I can’t live without it.”

Damrosch echoes that point.

“It is important to remember that the [current] opening months [January/February] of fishing with traditional gear when entanglement risk is low is the core of the fishery that every participant counts on for economic survival,” she says, pointing out around 94% of the total pounds landed each year are harvested before April 1. “The fair and orderly start of the traditional and culturally significant fall-winter season and equitable access to the resource is PCFFA's top priority.

“That is not to say that the 6% of crab harvested in the spring months is not important to some fleet members and communities,” she continues. “Therefore, we support options that offer fishing opportunities in the spring months when participation decreases, and the whales return as long as it can be conducted without adversely affecting the core traditional season.”

In addition, she adds, it’s important to frame “on-demand” gear as a situational tool rather than a regime change.

“The concern is that ‘pop-up’ and ‘on-demand’ gear are presented as a solution to entanglements rather than a tool to be used in specific conditions,” she says. “All fishermen, including those testing the gear and the NGOs fundraising and gear manufacturers selling this gear, acknowledge that this gear is not feasible for use in the fall-winter months.”

She adds that she is hopeful that through more testing, alternative methods can provide an opportunity to access the 6% of crabs that are harvested post April 1—with an asterisk.

“The danger is when this context is left out of the messaging, and the fall-winter and spring fisheries are conflated,” she says. “It is also unacceptable for traditional gear used when entanglement risk is low to be misrepresented—accidentally or on purpose—as less than ‘whale safe.’”

Meanwhile, an additional adaptation is in the works, with the possible chance of its own EFP testing in spring 2025. Fishermen like Dick Ogg hope the technique of grappling—using a hook to snare connected pots off the bottom—for crab pots linked together at depth would eliminate vertical lines without the steep expense of pop-up gear.

“I’m not saying ‘ropeless' gear doesn’t work, or shouldn’t be used, as it does create opportunity,” he says. “But we have a method to do it that’s whale safe, and where there isn’t money going to innovators making profits off the backs of fishermen.”

That all happens against the backdrop, as CDFW’s Bartling acknowledges, that a robust understanding of humpback whale movements is at best immature.

“Our data set doesn’t go back very far,” he says. “We weren’t flying to see them until the RAMP Working Group began [in 2015].”

He goes on to note that recent aerial surveys reveal whales closer to shore, at the continental shelf break chasing krill, and on the perimeter of Monterey Bay.

“They’re a little bit everywhere,” he says. “And I’m sure Mother Nature could throw us a loopity loop.”

So the perpetual takeaway remains: No matter how much things change, one thing will stay the same—the industry will have to keep molting in order to survive.

Following a Crab Season Delay, the Fleet Awaits a Report on Pop-Up Gear and More

Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust

(831) 233-3101