Nearly three months after the Dungeness crab fishing season opened, the window is coming to a close.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced that the commercial and recreational Dungeness crab fishing window will close April 15 due to the presence of whales. This closure will impact fishers using vertical fishing lines south of Pigeon Point—including Monterey Bay and Morro Bay, or “Zone 4.”
However, after the season closure, fishers with experimental fishing permits (EFPs) to use ropeless crab gear will be able to use them, which was approved and expanded by the California Fish and Game Commission last December. This spring marks the third season that EFPs will be in use locally.
These ropeless crab traps are seen as “whale safe” and work by allowing fishers to release the trap’s lid—attached to a buoy—using an acoustic signal. This signal triggers the lid to float to the surface with a rope attached to the trap.
This year will be an interesting one for EFP fishers, says Ryan Bartley, a scientist with CDFW. In previous years, the program saw strong results, with a 98-percent gear retrieval rate and $1.5 million worth of crab landed.
This season, however, crab numbers appear to be lower—and the number of fishers with ropeless gear permits has increased.
“There’s an asterisk for this year’s EFP testing,” Bartley says. “There's a lot more interest because they were successful last year. But there's not very much crab around. There's gonna be a cost-benefit analysis each of the fishers is gonna make when it comes to time, fuel, crew and equipment to do this.”
Whale entanglements have been notoriously difficult to track. Although only one confirmed entanglement—a humpback whale sighted off Monterey Bay—has occurred so far this season, Geoff Shester, Oceana’s California campaign director and senior scientist, says the true number often emerges after the season when whales become entangled in gear that was left behind.
In the last three seasons, 33 humpback whales out of a total of 38 were first sighted and entangled after the central California crab season closed, according to the CDFW’s entanglement data.
“So every year, it's sort of the same thing, where during the season, everyone's like, wow, we're doing great this year. Then starting in the summertime and through the fall, the numbers start coming back,” Shester says. “There's this delay, and so we can't really know how we're doing until the following year.”
The humpback whale entangled this season was first sighted just last year, in October—also entangled in commercial Dungeness crab gear. According to CDFW, the whale was caught in gear with tags from both the 2023–24 and 2024–25 seasons. Efforts by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are underway to track and free the animal.
“[The whale] has a satellite tag so the team can find it again,” says Michael Milstein, Public Affairs Officer with NOAA. “There is a team assembling to attempt to reach it if weather cooperates, possibly over the weekend.”
CDFW announced the closure based on aerial survey data that documented 16 humpback whales in Zone 4. Dungeness crab fisheries remain open but are restricted in other areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area. The continued use of vertical lines off Half Moon Bay, San Francisco and Bodega Bay is a concern for environmental groups, as whales are now returning to their feeding grounds.
“These whales will swim in a day between Monterey and San Francisco,” Shester says. “It's sort of a silly idea that somehow they're only going to stay down here.”