The North Coast’s commercial Dungeness crab season is officially closing on June 20 at 6 p.m. after a risk assessment was conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) Director Charlton H. Bonham on June 13.
A confirmed entanglement of a juvenile humpback whale with two different sets of crab fishing gear was reported in Humboldt County on June 7. CDFW Law Enforcement Division officers who sighted the whale reported it had crab line wrapped around its tail several times and was dragging another set of crab gear, with photographs confirming a CA Dungeness Crab buoy tag attached.
Bonham, in a CDFW press release, said this required a closure of the fishing zones. Fishing Zones 1 and 2 from the California/Oregon border to the Sonoma/Mendocino County line will be closing in order to reduce the “risk of entanglement in crab fishing gear,” according to a CDFW press release.
All traps must be removed from these zones by next Friday as part of the closure. Commercial crabbing vessels will be able to retrieve any commercial Dungeness crab traps that were lost, damaged, abandoned or otherwise derelict from the two fishing zones starting June 27 at 6 a.m.
This article appears in Wide Open.