BREAKING: California’s Dungeness crab season delayed yet again, this time until Dec. 30

Crab lovers, it’s wanting like a late — and brief — Dungeness season.

California Fish and Wildlife officers on Wednesday night introduced one other postponement within the industrial Dungeness crab season for the complete state coast — the third delay this season.

There are two geographically primarily based causes behind the choice:

From the Sonoma/Mendocino County line south to the Mexican border, a threat evaluation undertaken Wednesday decided there may be nonetheless a excessive focus of migrating whales that might get tangled in fishing gear. It’s the fourth consecutive 12 months of delays to guard the humpbacks.

On the far north coast, whales have moved south from Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties, however state officers stated testing of crabs caught in these waters confirmed low meat high quality, therefore the continued ban there.

Industrial crabbing shall be delayed till Dec. 30, and presumably later. The subsequent threat evaluation is scheduled to happen on or earlier than Dec. 22.

The continued postponement obtained a unanimous suggestion of the California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, which is comprised of each industrial and leisure crab fishermen, scientists and conservation organizations, in response to Geoff Shester of Oceana, who’s a member of the group.

Historically, the industrial season begins Nov. 15 and the leisure season sooner than that. This 12 months, leisure crabbing has been allowed since Nov. 5, as long as crabbers use solely hoop nets and crab snares. And since Nov. 28, leisure fishing with crab traps has been allowed off the far north coast however not elsewhere.

Oceana, a conservation group, cites figures from the NOAA Fisheries that estimate that roughly 75 % of reported whale entanglements show deadly as a result of the heavy fishing gear can stop the mammals from diving for meals.

Since 2015, there have been delays in all however one industrial Dungeness season within the Bay Space. A toxin, domoic acid, that might sicken anybody who eats the contaminated crab destroyed Northern California’s 2015-2016 industrial season and created delays in different years.

In 2018, the industrial season started with out a hitch though leisure crabbers needed to postpone their fishing.

In 2019 and 2020, the fishing line hazard to whales resulted in a crabbing delay of a number of weeks. The 2020 crabbing season was formally set to start Dec. 23, however value negotiations between crab fleets and seafood processors delayed the beginning till early January 2021.

The 2021 season was delayed two weeks for much Northern California, and obtained underway Dec. 1. Within the Bay Space, the industrial crabbing season wasn’t allowed to begin till Dec. 29. The tip got here sooner than common – April 8 of this 12 months – after two whales turned entangled in crab-fishing gear, one off the San Mateo County coast and one in Monterey Bay.

In line with Oceana, the state recorded three whales caught in crabbing strains earlier this 12 months.