California’s Dungeness Crab Season Will Be Delayed for the Fifth Year in a Row
It’s another tough year for crustacean lovers.
The Dungeness crab season in California has been pushed back from November 15 to at least December 1, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Friday. Officials made the call to protect humpback whales that have been spotted in the Bay Area throughout October.
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“Large aggregations of humpback whales continue to forage between Bodega Bay and Monterey and allowing the use of crab traps would increase the risk of an entanglement in those fishing zones,” Charlton H. Bonham, the director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in a statement to the Chronicle.
Scientists believe that the humpbacks’ migration patterns changed in part thanks to climate change. Warming waters moved the whales’ prey closer to shore, with the pod of humpbacks soon following. When crab fishers operate in the same area, the whales can get caught in their equipment, especially in fishing lines that run from crab pots on the seafloor to buoys on the water’s surface.
From 2014 to 2022, commercial Dungeness crab fishing in California was responsible for 28 percent of all humpback entanglements off the state’s coast, according to a Bay Nature report cited by Eater SF. The practice also led to 23 percent of all accidents involving humpbacks in that same period.
California’s Dungeness crab season was also delayed last year: Commercial crab fishing started on December 31 with a 50 percent commercial trapping restriction, Eater noted. That ban was fully lifted on January 15. This year, officials will reassess conditions on November 17 to see whether another delay is necessary.
While commercial crab fishing is on pause, sport crab fishing will be allowed to begin on November 4. In certain regions, crab pots will be banned, but hoop nets and crab snares will be permitted. After the November 17 follow-up, recreational fishers will also be notified whether they’re able to use crab traps.
Until then, those in the industry may be feeling a bit crabby—and we don’t mean that in a good way.
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