Katie Rodriguez here, thinking about solutions, and how often those solutions come with disruptive change, stigma and polarization as they begin to challenge the status quo. One example is “pop-up gear,” a technology-enabled way of fishing for Dungeness crab that allows fishers to fish when whales are in the water.
For the first time on the West Coast, pop-up gear has been broadly authorized for use in the spring Dungeness crab fishery. Specifically, as of Friday, April 17, fishers from San Francisco all the way to the U.S./Mexico border can use Sub Sea Sonics/Guardian Ropeless Systems, an approved manufacturer of the gear which rely on an acoustic signal to release buoys attached to a string of crab traps resting on the seafloor.
The tech significantly reduces the risk of whale entanglements by sending traps down to the bottom without leaving a rope in the water. And, as I learned from speaking with a fisherman at Whalefest Monterey on April 11—where several manufacturers had gear on display—it’s been a rocky road to get here.
Even now, despite promising results, only a small (though growing) percentage of fishers are on board with this new way of fishing.
“I’m going to prove why this gear doesn’t work,” Brand Little remembers thinking back in 2022, when the gear was first introduced. Based out of San Francisco, he claims he was the first to test it.
He says much of the fishing community was initially against the gear, arguing it wouldn’t work despite having never tried it.
“Basically, I volunteered my summer. It took three or four trips to figure out how to get it right,” Little says. “After, I had one deckhand say he would only come back if we kept using the pop-up gear. It was just less [physically demanding] work.”
The resistance to the gear is understandable. The risks fall largely on fishers—if the gear fails, they absorb the losses in an industry already operating on increasingly tight margins. It’s a dynamic echoed in agriculture, where farmers are often bombarded with new technological fixes to their farming challenges, but require costly and uncertain transitions.
Still, pop-up gear has been gaining momentum. Each year, more fishers try out the gear, sometimes supported by rental programs and grants that help offset the still-significant startup costs—especially for those holding smaller fishing permits.
One potential upside, I learned from Little, is the potential to use the gear in other fisheries. He’s found some success in the coonstripe shrimp fishery, a smaller species, similar to spot prawns.
“Only about 20 percent of the permits in the state are for the spring fishery,” Little says, noting many fishers stick to the winter season and have little incentive to try the new gear. “But for that 20 percent, we’ve found a niche market. And the gear has worked flawlessly.”