February 22, 2021 — A new collaborative project between environmental groups, the state, scientists, and Dungeness crab fishers is testing innovative new gear designed to reduce the impact of whales and sea turtles getting caught in fishing gear.
This is in response to California’s recent state regulations to reduce the risk of endangered whales and sea turtles getting caught in commercial Dungeness crab gear. The regulations went into effect last November, and when high numbers of humpback whales were sighted off the coast near San Francisco and Monterey Bay, the opening of the commercial Dungeness crab season was delayed by about a month.
Since 2014, the number of interactions between whales and fishing gear has been historically high. In 2019, for example, 26 whales were entangled off the West Coast, 17 of which were humpback whales.
“There’s a vertical line attached to the trap that goes to the buoys at the surface,” said Greg Wells of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation who is managing the collaborative gear-testing research project. “That’s the part that poses an entanglement risk for whales and other marine life.”