SANTA CRUZ — You couldn’t blame crab fishermen Tim and Dan Obert for feeling like they’re passing through the perfect storm.
First there was the pandemic, which shut down restaurants and, in turn, much of the demand for Dungeness crab. Then a new regulation took effect on Nov. 1 that heavily restricts the Dungeness fishery’s operations when whales and sea turtles are around. Then the state delayed the opening of the Dungeness crab season until after Thanksgiving.
“If you take all three of those things, you will destroy this fishery,” said Tim Obert, 35, of Scotts Valley. “There will be no crabbers left.”
Dungeness crab in Northern California is an integral and celebrated part of the culture of coastal communities stretching from Monterey to Crescent City. Wharf restaurants sling crab legs to thousands of tourists in the spring and summer, while bustling seafood markets feed countless locals during the holiday season.
For fishermen who sell fresh crab when the fishery is open November through June, Thanksgiving and Christmas are the biggest moneymakers. Some fishers say 70% of their yearly income is earned in the first couple of months of the season.
“The Dungeness market drops off big time after Christmas and New Year’s,” said Jeff Bradford, the meat manager at Shopper’s Corner in Santa Cruz. Once the crabs begin to molt in March, he said, “we just quit buying it.” And most crabbers move on to catching fish such as salmon, black cod and rockfish, which tides them over until the next crab season.
“Crab is the most lucrative, most profitable fishery we have,” said Obert, who explained that he and his twin brother, Dan, sell their catch to grocers, who freeze and sell the product all year long.
But Tim Obert’s sentiment may not ring as true this year, largely because the pandemic reduced the offseason demand for crab. When the global shutdown began, restaurants were shuttered, parties canceled and much of the frozen crab that’s sold year-round never left the freezers. The backlog of unsold crustaceans means the fishers won’t be getting top dollar for their catch from fishmongers, who ultimately set the market price.
“I think we’re gonna see a really depressed market pricewise,’’ said fisherman Khevin Mellegers, 47, whose boat is docked in the Santa Cruz harbor. “That’s kind of the rumor on the street.”
But he’s more worried about continued delays and fishery closures ordered by the state. “You can’t make money if you can’t go to work,” said Mellegers, a Felton resident.
On Nov. 4, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that the start of the Central Coast commercial crab season was being postponed from Nov. 15 to Dec. 1. The delay was called because aerial and vessel-based surveys done on Oct. 29 estimated there were 345 whales in the area. Under new regulations, sightings of more than 20 whales or just one leatherback sea turtle per fishing zone trigger immediate action by the state.
Mellegers and the Obert brothers expressed frustration at the stringency of the new regulations, which would allow the department director to shut down the fishery for the entire season if just three humpbacks become entangled in commercial crab gear, regardless of the incident’s outcome.
Both men pointed out the lack of strict regulation of Dungeness fisheries in Oregon and Washington state as well as California recreational fishing. They also noted that entanglements usually aren’t fatal and that dozens of whales each year are hit and killed by fast-moving cargo ships and oil tankers.
“Most of these whale deaths are from ship strikes, but nobody’s gonna stop wanting to get their stuff from Target or Walmart,” Mellegers said.
From 2014 to 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported 163 documented incidents of humpback whale entanglements off the U.S. West Coast. Roughly half of those whales were wrapped in unidentifiable gear. Of the gear that was discernible, commercial Dungeness crab gear was behind 55 of the entanglements — by far the largest portion of documented incidents. And over the past four decades, 85% of the confirmed whale entanglement reports originated from California.
Before 2017, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife had “zero regulations in place to reduce the risk that whales and sea turtles will get tangled up in fishing gear,” said Kristen Monsell, legal director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity.
To remedy that, the center filed a 2017 lawsuit to force the state to comply with the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which prohibits the harassment, harm or killing of federally listed species. On that list are Pacific leatherback sea turtles, blue whales, humpbacks and gray whales. Though many populations of grays and humpbacks have rebounded, others — including the Central American humpback population that migrates through California waters — have dwindled to a few hundred whales.
“The federal government has found that these humpback whales have not recovered precisely because of ongoing entanglements in fishing gear,” Monsell said.
She sees the new regulations as a step in the right direction, but wishes state officials advocated more strongly for ropeless gear, which Monsell believes is a key solution to creating a safe fishery for whales.
Gear without ropes is a new innovation that involves remote-operated devices on crab traps that, when triggered, inflate and “pop up” to the surface without the need for long ropes. The alternative gear, however, is still in its developmental infancy and has yet to gain the trust of fishermen, who can’t afford to lose their gear or their catch.
“They’re having a lot of issues with them actually popping up,” Tim Obert said. “That’s the scariest part for us as fishermen because then we’re leaving pots behind for these whales to get entangled in out of season. That’s not something we want to do at all.”
From 1982 to 2014, the average number of whale entanglements on the West Coast was about nine per year. From 2014 to 2017, however, the yearly average jumped to 41.
Marine scientists say it’s likely that the spike in entanglements was partially due to shifting ocean temperatures and anomalies. One example was “The Blob” of warm water that in 2015-16 resulted in krill and anchovy concentrations in the North Pacific, luring whales closer to land and into the crab trap ropes.
With continuing environmental uncertainty, shifting migration patterns, increasing restrictions and the threat of ongoing COVID-19 disruptions, many Dungeness operations have jumped ship or moved north of Point Arena, where the catch is better and the whales are fewer.The permits alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it’s not easy for the smaller businesses to switch gears and invest in other fisheries.
“What I think we’re gonna end up seeing is that the majority of the smaller boat operators are going to have a really hard time staying in this business because it is very expensive to participate in,” Mellegers said.
He and the Obert twins worry that their breadwinning fishery won’t carry them much further into the future.
“I got a 4-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy and I’ve provided for my family all the years we’ve been out here,” Mellegers said. “Believe me, it’s hard when you look at your little guys and you got a mortgage payment and you’re thinking: ‘If they take away 30% of my season, I’m gonna make a whole lot less.’”
The Link LonkNovember 24, 2020 at 08:02PM
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