CA’s commercial Dungeness crab season opens Dec. 31 but with restrictions to protect whales

SAN FRANCISCO — After three delays, the business Dungeness crab season in California will lastly open on New 12 months’s Eve, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife introduced Thursday.

The beginning of the season had been curtailed so as to shield humpback whales from changing into entangled in lure and buoy traces.

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Some whales nonetheless stay of their winter feeding grounds off the coast of San Francisco Bay and so solely half as many traps as common can be allowed in all areas south of the Sonoma/Mendocino county line, the regulatory company stated.

Some two dozen humpbacks have been noticed within the area final week, the division stated.

Business crabbing additionally had been delayed in Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties due to poor meat high quality however “current exams point out crab are prepared for market,” the division stated.

The crab trade is considered one of California’s main fisheries and the shellfish is particularly standard across the holidays.

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The business season historically begins Nov. 15 for waters between the Mendocino county line and the border with Mexico.

Humpback whales can get caught within the vertical ropes related to heavy business traps, which they’ll drag round for months, leaving them injured, starved or so exhausted that they’ll drown.

The fish and recreation division stated final month that there have been at the very least 15 confirmed entanglements of humpback whales by fishing gear off California this yr, together with three involving Dungeness crab gear.

Humpback whales migrate north yearly from Mexico’s Baja California peninsula the place they beginning calves. In spring, summer season and fall the humpbacks feed on anchovies, sardines and krill off the California coast earlier than heading again south.

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