With humpback whales heading back to their feeding grounds off coastal California and gray whales migrating north to Alaska, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it will close the commercial and recreational Dungeness crab fisheries in southern and central fishing zones next week to reduce the risk of entanglements.
Recently spotters with the department counted as many as 34 humpbacks in one day, said Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientists at the wildlife agency. The increased presence of whales observed by planes overhead and vessels on the water triggered the decision to close the fishing season on April 8.
“As it becomes summer, it is not uncommon to see dozens of groups of humpbacks foraging between Monterey Bay and the Gulf of the Farallones (near San Francisco),” he said.
With the closure, the wildlife department is also expected to examine new draft regulations for the fishery, which could set even stricter requirements for when crab fishermen can start fishing with lines and pots and when the season must end.
In former years, before a settlement that lead to current regulations limiting the season when the giant mammals are spotted in larger numbers, Dungeness crab fishermen typically started in mid-November and pulled their traps in June. This season, they weren’t allowed to start until late January; fishermen have since pulled in 13 million pounds of crabs worth about $43.4 million.
Whales – and other animals of the sea – can get wrapped up in the lines that connect the pots catching crabs on the ocean floor to buoys on the water’s surface – in 2023, 27 whales were caught in fishing gear off the West Coast, five of which were wrapped up in California Dungeness crab gear, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records.
“Over the last few years, we’ve gone into the spring season looking like we did a good job with no entanglements,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist with Oceana. “The concern is you’re seeing the numbers start adding up later in the fall. That means they didn’t close it early enough.”
Recently, Oceana has pushed for earlier closure of the season and is using the photograph of a humpback snarled in crab gear taken off Baja in 2022 in a social media campaign about the threats of entanglement.
The “Whales in Crisis” campaign includes an appearance by actress Cobie Smulders and calls on decision-makers to do more, showing the humpback struggling to swim while weighted down by ropes and crab pots wrapped around and digging into its tail.
Shester said the photo is not only gruesome evidence of what happens when whales become entangled, but also an example of what happens when fishing zones off California are not closed before the humpbacks migrate back to California from Mexico.
The photographed humpback was disentangled but died from its injuries. The photograph documented a tag from the commercial California Dungeness crab fishery dated from the 2019-21 season, with the advocates saying the entanglement likely occurred in 2021.
“So, the whale swam for over 1,000 miles for nearly a year before it was observed entangled,” Shester said.
New pop-up gear is being tested this season to potentially further limit future entanglement threats.
A group of 20 crabbers who have signed up and received grant money to test the new gear will be permitted to continue fishing off the central and southern fishing zones past the April 8 closure.
Instead of using the lines that hang down through the water, the pop-up gear developed by a San Diego scientist stores the line and the buoy with the trap on the sea floor until fishermen are ready to retrieve it.
With the new gear, fishermen can pursue their livelihood, Shester said, but their work wouldn’t be posing an entanglement danger to the whales.
And in the meantime, Shester also said he would like to see finite dates set – during the 60-day window when the whales are in Mexico from January through March – when the fishermen can count on using their traditional gear.
“We’re willing to work around the whales as long as we have the 60-day window when the whales aren’t present,” said Brand Little, who has fished crabs for eight years and is among the 20 who will use pop-up gear starting next week.
He said he can typically run traditional gear — which means 450 crab pots — in 18 hours. He’ll spend that same amount of time fishing just 150 pots with the new pop-up gear.
“People like me are doing it because we don’t want to lose the opportunity,” he said, adding that this is the second year he’s trying it out. “But, doing it is much more labor intensive.”
The wildlife agency will watch the group of fishermen to see how successful the gear is and also make sure it can be monitored for enforcement. Presently, wildlife wardens are able to pull traps to make sure fishermen are complying with regulations.
“If it’s successful, we’d like the department to authorize gear for the entire fleet to use in the spring season,” Shester said. “This is the future. We know it’s unlikely to go back to vertical gear. This year is the first year where we can see, does it work because it will be tested by a larger group and will be enforced by Fish and Wildlife.”
The season started with 350 fishing permits; in the last two weeks a little more than 200 fishermen were still at it.
Bartling said the department believes the new gear will be a “very valuable tool for reducing risk”
“There is still testing occurring and some enforcement challenges we need to resolve,” he said.
Source: Orange County Register
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