Officials announce the opening of the commercial Dungeness crab season on Jan. 5.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced that the commercial Dungeness crab fishery will be open for business from the Sonoma/Mendocino county line to the U.S./Mexico border starting on Jan. 5, 2025.

Areas north of Mendocino, specifically Humboldt and Del Norte counties, remain on hold due to the need for additional crab meat quality tests, prompted by high domoic acid concentrations at one of the northern sampling locations.

While this is good news for fishing zones in Central and Southern California, the commercial Dungeness crab fishery opens under certain conditions. To reduce entanglement risk for humpback whales, commercial fishers will be subject to a 50 percent trap reduction.

“Making the decision on when to open the Dungeness crab fishery is never an easy one. It requires careful consideration of the need to protect endangered species while sustaining the livelihood of California’s fishing communities,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham in a press release.

The Dungeness crab season in the Northern areas of the state will automatically open on Jan. 15, 2025, at 12:01am under a 25 percent trap reduction.

Despite shortened commercial fishing seasons, the California Dungeness crab fishery remains one of the state’s most lucrative, averaging close to $45 million per year over the last five years, according to the press release. 

The commercial Dungeness crab fishery has remained closed over the holiday season for the past six consecutive years—a time when it has traditionally been open. Last season, the central zones in California were delayed until Jan. 18, while northern California opened on Jan. 5.

“I think we were a bit nervous because there are still a lot of whales out there,” says Dr. Geoff Shester, Oceana’s California campaign director and senior scientist, “but we see this as an olive branch of support for the local fishing community. They’ve done a lot of work to protect local wildlife. That said, we need to do more to reduce local entanglement, and we might see the season close earlier this year.”

Recently, the California Fish and Game Commission unanimously approved the expansion of an experimental fishing permit, which will allow more fishers to use ropeless, or “pop-up” crab traps in the spring.

“We interpret this as a 50% reduction risk for the whales, but now we’ve got this pop-up gear that hopefully can revive the spring fishery going forward,” says Shester.

The next scheduled risk assessment is expected to occur on or around Jan. 15, 2025.