San Mateo County crabbing season producing a solid yield, gear reduction remains a challenge

“For us, it’s been a great opportunity. Our guests have been in love,” Yahaira Diaz, a manager at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. — located just off the harbor — said. “They’re really happy the crab is back.”

But fishers have mixed feelings on the season — which was marked by a 50% reduction in allowed traps and a delayed start.

“It’s kind of a new kind of deal for us, starting with gear reductions last year in the Bay Area,” Tim Obert, a commercial fisher who serves on multiple fishing industry boards, including the Dungeness Crab Task Force, said. “No one wants a gear reduction, it’s half of our pot allotment … when that happens, it’s kind of a scary thing for the fishing fleet. We don’t know what our price is going to be.”

Nevertheless, “there’s been a good volume caught,” he said, noting the health and maturity of this season’s crabs.

“Even though we’re using half our gear, we’re having a profitable season, having a chance to make more money,” Obert said.

The crab season typically begins in November, but was delayed due to the potential for whale entanglement in crabbing gear, Ryan Bartling, an environmental scientist supervisor at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said previously. It marks a pattern for California’s troubled fishing industry, which has struggled with delays and late starts over the past several years.

Fish and Wildlife has not recorded any entanglements for the current crabbing season. If an entanglement were to occur, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife director would implement next steps on a case-by-case basis, Bartling said.

Chris Tille, Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point harbormaster, said getting vessels back into the water is a positive despite the challenges fishers have faced this season.

“I’m thrilled the fleet is out and they’re fishing,” he said. “It’s great to have that palpable energy back in the harbor.”

Pillar Point allows for fishers to sell catch off their boats, which typically occurs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tille recommends patrons bring cash, although some boats may take Venmo or alternate forms of payment.

While the specific amount of pots a vessel can carry varies by boat, sales of Dungeness crab have been roughly $3.25 a pound across the board in the area, Obert said. That’s nearly a full dollar increase from last year’s season, but less than fishers at other ports are making, according to Obert.

And although fishers at local ports like Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz are able to make a solid income from their harvest this year, Obert emphasized that in a situation with lower and less profitable crab yield, the reduction in gear could have created catastrophe.

“That’s the thing, working on these boards and working groups, it’s easy to look at this as … ‘you did just fine,’” he said. “And the following year you go and use a 50% reduction and you have not a good volume, with a low price. And if that happens, that’s how disasters are made for our fishing industry.”

Half Moon Bay fisher Barry Day reiterated the sentiment.

“We’re having a good year now, but with the quieter years, you need all the gear,” he said.

Nevertheless, he said, fishers in the Half Moon Bay harbor are relatively “busy with what we got,” Day said.

Crab seasons are cyclical in nature, he noted, with some years much better than others based on the general age of the population.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be so good. I was pleasantly surprised,” he said. “It’s a lot better than last year.”

Last year’s season both started late and ended early, with a final fishing date in April, Bartling said. 2022 was no better, although 2021 saw a much later closure at the beginning of June. Bay Area crabbing season tends to end early, Bartling said, and it’s possible this year will follow the same pattern to protect incoming migrating whales.

“We’re monitoring migration arrival and want to avoid further entanglements,” he said.

Another Half Moon Bay fisher, Tim Wallinger, remains frustrated by the continual restriction and delay while whales are, for the most part, currently on a migration pattern that takes them away from the California coast.

“It’s too bad we lost all the money on our good markets,” he said, referencing the Thanksgiving and Christmas markets that typically create large sales for fishers. “It’s going, [but] it doesn’t make up for a full season. It seems a little better than expected … but we missed out on all our major markets, so we lost out on a lot of money.”

Whale populations are slowly regrowing, but species repopulation could take decades or more, Bartling said, calling it a “long-term process” before significant changes could be made to fishing industry regulations.

In the meantime, Obert and other fishers remain committed to reducing entanglement impact scores, he said. A majority of last season’s entanglements happened out of season, with derelict gear left behind — a frustration because commercial fishermen aren’t always allowed to pick up old gear they see.

He’s hoping that the fleet can work with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to institute better practices for cleaning up potentially hazardous gear.

“[That’s] something we have to work on as a fleet, cleaning up derelict gear or any kind of gear we find,” Obert said.