Program recovers lost crabbing gear

The effort off the coast of San Mateo County involves a collection of fishermen and environmental advocates that partnered to recover 838 pots over the course of three years, according to the Half Moon Bay Seafood Marketing Association.

While looking toward what they hope will be another successful year, challenges may lie ahead as they wait to see whether the state implements a new law suggesting citations to those who leave gear behind. Now, locals are hoping to continue forging a sustainable program that recovers costs for retrieval efforts and leverages technology to locate lost gear.

How it works is crews are paid to venture out to sea and bring back lost gear that’s left out after the season closes. Efforts are then made to identify and contact the crab pot owner, who can get it back for $85, cheaper than purchasing a new one, according to the association.

“You’re recovering something that’s lost as often as you can, the cost of getting it back is cheaper than it would be to replace it, and you’re cleaning up your ocean environment and reducing the risk of whale entanglement,” said Lisa Damrosch, executive director of the association. “It’s pretty easy to be supportive of this program.”

These programs have primarily relied on grant funding and are now striving to become self-sufficient. One breakthrough was leveraging GPS and asking those already out at sea to send in geo-tagged photos of leftover crab pots. This allows crews to direct their recovery efforts, Damrosch explained.

The new data tool was first tested in Half Moon Bay in 2016 before it was picked up in four other Northern California ports, said Tom Dempsey, senior fisheries project director with The Nature Conservancy.

Now, fishing vessels or charter boats have a quick and easy way to report leftover gear to those organizing recovery efforts. Helping to streamline the process has been critical to recovering more gear and keeping costs down, Dempsey explained.

“It’s an issue that I think the fishery overall sees as something they need to address and it’s been taking a lot of steps to ensure that gear gets out of the water at the end of the season,” Dempsey said. “Our role has been trying to improve the process.”

The conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, provided grant funding toward the pilot that could ideally be replicated elsewhere in the state or nation. A goal is to have a scalable program as recovery needs fluctuate depending on weather and season, Dempsey said.

“We got involved as we saw a whale entanglement uptick a few years back,” Dempsey explained, noting the nonprofit’s goal is to “make the ocean safer for whales while still having a thriving Dungeness crab fishery.” 

Sustainable program

While recovering gear is not a new concept, prior to this organized effort it had primarily been sporadic and smaller in terms of scale, said Dempsey and Damrosch. The goal now is to move toward a sustainable, cost recoverable program that’s not reliant on grants, they explained.

Increasing recovery fees has been part of that. Last year, fishermen were charged $85 per crab pot, which recovered 63 percent of total costs in 2017. It was an increase compared to a 47 percent cost recoverable program in 2016 when gear owners were charged $65. Only a little over half of the pots recovered are returned to owners, while the remainder are auctioned, salvaged or destroyed, according to the association.

The program has grown since its inception with 182 pots recovered in 2015 over six sea days, followed by 207 pots in 2016 over 12 days, and 449 crab pots pulled over 13 days in 2017, according to the association. It’s too early to tell how many pots might be found following this year’s commercial crab season closing at the end of June.

There’s greater chances though as people now submit GPS-tagged photos of gear left out several weeks following the season’s closure. Tom Mattusch, who runs a charter boat out of Pillar Point, said he frequently alerts the association of gear he comes across.

A member of the San Mateo County Harbor District Board of Commissioners, Mattusch participates in a working group under the Ocean Protection Council’s Dungeness Crab Task Force that’s looking to reduce whale entanglement risks.

“There’s always gear out there, but one of the key attributes of this [local] project is now there’s funding and therefore incentives for people to pick up the gear,” Mattusch said. “The seafood marketing association can pay people to go pick up pots, [last] year there was an absolute record number of pots that got picked up.”

State intervention

The working group is also developing a risk assessment and mitigation program that will support the state in its efforts to implement rules laid out in Senate Bill 1437, the Whale Protection and Crab Gear Retrieval Act. One recent recommendation is for the state to implement stricter standards requiring the crab pot owners be easily identified with tags.

Some are now concerned about the potential for the state to step in with rules mandating owners of lost crab pots pay fees. But locals are hopeful the program at Pillar Point Harbor could serve as a model for collaboration with the fishing industry.

With warmer ocean temperatures cited as cause for whales altering their migration patterns in search of food, Dempsey said the fishermen have been indispensable in promoting environmental goals.

“That partnership with fishing communities was essential to any program,” Dempsey said. “There’s no way the state and federal folks can handle this on their own.”

Damrosch, who noted the crab fishery is a $7 million industry in Pillar Point Harbor, said local crews have an inherent interest in participating in the program. Still, the association is keenly watching how the state might act, she said.

“I would contend that there are no better ocean stewards than the ocean fisherman. No one cares more about the ocean and no one depends more on the ocean than our commercial fishermen, and no one wants to entangle a whale,” Damrosch said. “I hope and I expect that when the [state’s] plan is finalized, it will help support the ongoing work of ports like Half Moon Bay.”