Rather than remain idle in a closed season, crab fishermen in California have been hauling in a different catch: lost crab gear.
The season remains closed in most parts of the state after dangerous levels of a biotoxin were found in crabs, so, in a collaboration with The Karen C Drayer Wildlife Health Centre at the University of California, a group of Dungeness fishermen have instead been retrieving lost crab gear from the ocean.
They then sell the recovered gear back to the original owners, in what they hope will be a financially sustainable model for future clean-ups.
Kirsten Gilardi, director of the California Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, said: “Lost and abandoned fishing gear impacts the ocean on so many levels.”
“It alters underwater habitat, entangles or traps marine wildlife and obstructs fishermen’s work. Lost fishing gear recovery is essentially a ‘treatment’ for the ocean that can be applied easily by the fishing community,” she added.
Since early November, the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association and commercial crab fishermen from the San Francisco Bay Area have collected more than 500 lost pots from the most abundant waters for crab production.
Andy Guiliano, a Dungeness crab fishermen from Emeryville, said that crab fishing is typically an environmentally friendly fishery.
“The only achilles’ heel is, inevitably, gear gets lost during the season,” he said. “With an effective gear removal programme in place, we can leave the ocean essentially undisturbed, almost as if we were never there.”
The project, conducted as a pilot last season in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, expanded south to San Francisco this season after receiving funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Programme.
Funds are used to pay fishermen for each recovered trap which are sold back to the original owner for $75 (a new pot costs between $160 and $200). Unsold gear is recycled.
In October 2015, the Dungeness Crab Task Force voted to recommend legislation creating a permanent statewide crab gear retrieval programme based on this model.
