Tag Archives: Dungeness crab gear
Crab fisherman files cease-and-desist against fiber-optic surveyors
The world’s longest fiber-optic cable may be coming to Eureka, but crab fishermen say ships associated with the project have disrupted what’s left of this year’s crabbing season. But longtime crab fisherman Ken Bates filed a cease-and-desist order this week against the survey ships, saying their presence threatens to destroy Dungeness crab gear, or worse, displace gear far into the ocean, where it could entangle whales and prompt the state to sanction the coastal industry. >click to read< 19:43
Though impossible to prove, Con group claims early end to crab season helped reduce whale entanglements
Though impossible to prove, the Center for Biological Diversity credited the improvement to removal of commercial Dungeness crab gear from California coastal waters in mid-April, under a legal settlement,,, Sonke Mastrup, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, was less willing to make a definitive connection,,, His boss, agency director Chuck Bonham, had linked the initial spike in entanglements with environmental factors that in 2016 shifted the location of forage fish and whale feeding grounds at the same time that a toxic algae bloom delayed the start of the commercial crab season by 4 1/2 months. The result was that most of the crab fleet had gear in the water at the same time whales came up the coast to feed,,, >click to read< 11:06
