Crab Season 2023-24 Remains a Tricky Challenge
Monterey Bay’s ongoing closure has inspired some area fishers, like Sea Harvest Moss Landing, to source crab from partners in Newport, Oregon, where fewer whales roam and the season opened earlier.
The two-word version of the current California crab story goes like this: It’s complicated.
But the bottom line is Monterey Bay’s crab season has been delayed again and again, putting local fishers in an increasingly challenging place.
That said, hopeful news arrived after the Fisheries Trust finalized as this was set to originally publish.
Per California Department of Fish and Wildlife, its Director Charlton H. Bonham has assessed entanglement risk under the Risk Assessment Mitigation Program and updated the community that the commercial Dungeness crab fishery will open in Fishing Zones 3, 4, 5 and 6 on Jan. 18, at 12:01am—with gear setting period to begin 8am Jan. 15.
That update is accompanied by two stipulations: 1) a 50 percent gear reduction requirement, and 2) a fleet advisory.
CDFW points interested parties to its 2023-24 Commercial Dungeness Crab Fishery Frequently Asked Questions for more info about the season.
The recreational crab trap restriction in Fishing Zones 3 and 4 will also be lifted effective 8am Jan. 12. A fleet advisory for the recreational crew in all zones remains in effect.
(Fishing zone maps and more on fleet advisories can be viewed with the help of this CDFW explainer.)
The next scheduled risk assessment is scheduled to happen on or around Feb. 15.
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The reason crabbing season has been postponed most recently: humpback whales.
Humpbacks love the Monterey Bay for the upwelling currents that help provide lots of prey for them to feast upon.
The presence of those whales, however, can lead to entanglements with the lines that lead from surface buoys to crab pots on the bottom.
Enter the California Dungeness Crab Working Group, an advisory body to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), who is in charge of managing the crab fishery inside state waters (0-3 miles), who is in charge of managing the crab fishery inside state waters (0-3 miles).
The CDFW implemented a Conservation Plan in response to a lawsuit filed by Center for Biological Diversity in 2017, which set up the working group to collaboratively review data and assess whale entanglement risk in order to determine when and where the crab season can open.
The Working Group—which includes commercial and recreational fishermen, environmental organization representatives, members of the whale entanglement response network, and officials from state and federal agencies—uses data on whale movements collected by scientists and fishermen from the water and by aerial surveys.
Ryan Bartling, a scientist with CDFW, helps lead the group.
“There’s a combination of factors at play—risk assessment, the cooperation of the fleet, best fishing practices and improved ocean conditions,” he told me last year, “but we are trending way down [on entanglements].”
Nevertheless, steady whale activity and recent incidents of gear ensnarement with a leatherback turtle and a humpback whale have shoved back commercial crabbing season for the Central California coast four times since mid-November.
“All that data goes into our risk assessment program, and [recorded entanglements] put us into a position of risk aversion,” Bartling says. “We continue actively [gathering] air and surface data.”
Monterey-based fisherman Tim Obert participates with the Working Group. While he remains hopeful for an opportunity to crab as soon as mid-January, he is audibly concerned by the ongoing limbo.
“There is the possibility the whales won't leave,” he says. “The tough thing is we don’t know if we’ll have an opportunity or not, so we’re left wondering how short our season is becoming, kind of like a ticking clock—each week that goes by is one less week of work [and income] you’re going to have.”
He points out that the cancellation of salmon season in spring 2023 has compounding effects on fishermen’s livelihood and crab trap complications.
“When we’re fishing for salmon we’re also cleaning up [lost] crab traps, which helps protect the whales,” he says. “Salmon season gives us income to get through some kind of [crab] closure or delay. This year we didn’t have that, or disaster relief. The whole fleet is in a tough situation. Right now is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Obert has arranged to test out an alternative gear type, called “ropeless crab gear” by way of a partnership with Sub Sea Sonics, an underwater equipment manufacturer who specializes in acoustic and timer releases.
“It’s important we have different options because right now it’s zero options,” he says. “We have to think, ‘What can we actually do here to make a living?’”
He’s eager to have first-hand experience so he can contribute to ongoing crab policy mindfully.
“I want to be able to have real time personal data to fight for it or be against it,” he says. “It’s important to try things and be open-minded, but there is a reason we have things set up the way we do. It works.”
That openness to new—and expensive—technologies represents a potential shift among fishers previously reluctant to test them, as Bartling observes.
“I think it’s becoming less polarizing because [fishers] are seeing the opportunity there,” he says. “They’re looking ahead.”
Longtime fisherman Dick Ogg also sits on the Working Group, representing Bodega Bay.
He remains steadfast in reminding all concerned parties how dedicated the California fleet is to caretaking the coastal fisheries.
“So many people want to pit fishermen versus environmentalists,” he says. “People need to realize the fishermen are the real conservationists, That’s where we make our living. We’re out there every day. We understand the impacts of doing things correctly. We pay attention and really make a difference.”
The next update on crab season from the Working Group will happen on or around Jan. 11th.
Meanwhile, on Jan. 5, CDFW opened the commercial crab fishing season from the Oregon state line to the Sonoma/Mendocino county line.