We need to balance protecting whales with allowing sustainable crabbing practices that keep fisheries healthy and traditions alive.
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We need to balance protecting whales with allowing sustainable crabbing practices that keep fisheries healthy and traditions alive.
June 4, 2025
Stanley Ross (at left, coiling rope) and, from left, his friends Vince Maggiora, Dennis Folk, and Troy Cooper pull up crab traps just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge on an early November morning in 2018. (Photo credit: Samantha Ross)
It’s 5 a.m. when my alarm goes off. I roll out of bed and put on a long-sleeve shirt, a hoodie, a puffer jacket, and the thickest pants I own—it’s gonna be cold out there. My dad’s waiting for me in the kitchen with a tumbler of coffee, a piece of peanut butter toast, and a big smile on his face.
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“Are you ready to bring home some crab?” he asks.
We drive to meet my grandpa on his boat, docked in the Sausalito harbor, 30 minutes north of San Francisco. It’s still dark out, but my grandfather’s energy says otherwise. The motor is already running, and we take off. Streaks of sunrise peek out from the horizon as we pass under the Golden Gate Bridge. The pots have been soaking, sitting on the ocean floor since yesterday morning, and they should be full of Dungeness crabs that fell for our delicious trap of stinky old chicken meat.
My grandpa, Stanley Ross, a self-identifying fisherman living in my hometown of Oakland, has fished these waters for over 40 years. Crabbing is more than a hobby for him, me, and other recreational fishers; it’s a cultural touchstone in the Bay Area, a way we connect to the natural rhythms of the region. Our winters and springs have been marked by celebratory crab dinners, friends and family squeezing around a dining room table covered with butter-stained newspapers.
The author, admiring the catch. (Photo credit: Stanley Ross)
My grandpa lets me drive the boat, and I feel alive as the ocean sprays my face and salty winds whip my long hair around. I see an eruption of misty white water in front of me and slow down. Suddenly, a dark mass rises from the blue sea, and a barnacle-covered tail gives a wave before it disappears into the waters below. A whale. I am in awe.
Crabbing reminds me that there is so much life beyond the land, and that I am a foreign visitor in the homes of these magnificent creatures. Crabbing also shapes my understanding of what it means to eat locally and sustainably—to close the gap between animal and consumer, to know the source of my food and the people who provide it.
Growing up alongside my grandpa, I have come to appreciate the ways that many recreational crabbers approach the practice, tossing back females and respecting the minimum size limit of 5 ¾ inches and daily catch limit of 10 crabs per person. No one is patrolling usually, but we honor these rules so that the little ones can grow up and reproduce, keeping the fishery healthy and productive.
But the crabbing culture is at risk of disappearing because of environmental regulations enacted to protect whales, and I am concerned that unless we take immediate and urgent action to balance sustainable crabbing with whale protection, we may lose this vital part of Bay Area culture.
It’s a complicated issue to be sure. Each year, a number of humpback whales get entangled in fishing and crabbing gear as they pass through California’s waters to and from tropical breeding grounds—gear from fisheries that put nets, lines, or other equipment into the ocean for long periods.
These unfortunate encounters, which can end with fin amputations, wounds, or painfully slow deaths, are increasing as humpback whales migrate closer to the coast, some even venturing into the Bay.
“It’s already hard as it is, but we are definitely getting choked out by the regulations.”
Intent on protecting this federally endangered species, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has imposed harsh restrictions on the crab industry—like shortening the season and reducing the number of traps allowed—to minimize the risk of entanglement.
Historically, the Bay Area crabbing season has run from the first Saturday in November for recreational fishers and the second Tuesday in November for commercial, until June 30 for both. But for the sixth year in a row, the commercial season’s opening was delayed several months, and its end has been shortened.
This year, it closed two months early, on May 1, as dozens of humpback whales were spotted and another was found entangled in Monterey Bay. The recreational season still ends on June 30, but the use of crab traps is prohibited after May 15; hoop nets and crab snares, often trickier to use, are still allowed, though.
Before 2014, there were an average of 10 whale entanglements in fishing gear, including crab traps, per year off the U.S. West Coast. That number increased 400 percent to a historic high of 50 in 2015, prompting the creation of the California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group.
It remains high. In 2024, for instance, 31 humpback whales were entangled in commercial fishing gear off the west coasts of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries. Eleven of those were entangled in Dungeness crab pots. That number is higher than for any other year since 2018.
It is not well known why entanglements have increased, but there are likely several factors. For one, whale populations have been rebounding since 1986, when the International Whaling Commission adopted a temporary ban on commercial whaling that is still in place in most countries. It’s also likely due to increased public awareness of the issue and improved avenues for reporting, such as the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
Climate change is also a factor: The warmer ocean waters near the shore attract krill and small schooling fish, and their 50-foot-long predators follow. This overlaps with Dungeness crab territory, which is within three miles of land.
Unfortunately, the regulations meant to protect whales are threatening to wipe out the livelihoods of small-scale fishers who are committed to crabbing sustainably.
The conflict between protecting endangered species and supporting vital cultures is at play in other places as well. In Alaska, where a plan aims to revive the Chinook salmon population by suspending all fishing activities in the Yukon River until 2030, Native leaders have expressed concern that their communities are disproportionately burdened.
The plan cuts off an essential cultural resource that has sustained Indigenous people in the area for thousands of years, and they were not properly consulted in its development, they say.
For small-scale commercial fishers like Willie Norton of Bolinas, California, the delays in the season start are not just inconvenient, they are financially ruinous.
“Opening later is bad for us,” Norton told me. “The holidays are when a lot of crab is sold, when everybody wants to eat crab. It hurts everybody quite a bit; the market loss is big.”
This season, the commercial fishery didn’t open until January 5, after the critical Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holiday market had passed. Not only did fishermen have less time to crab, but they also were under a mandatory order to use 50 percent less gear.
A study from Nature estimates $13.6 million in annual losses across the California Dungeness crab fishery due to whale entanglement mitigation and other disturbances in the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
Crabs in the morning often mean a family feast that night. (Photo credit: Samantha Ross)
Norton prides himself on only using sustainable fishing practices—“all rod and reel, fishing one local spot,” he said—and selling only the highest quality seafood to the Bay Area.
“[It’s] already hard as it is, but we are definitely getting choked out [by the regulations],” he explained. “It’s a tough way to make a living.” Tough can quickly turn to deadly: The pressure to make every day of the shortened season count compels fishers to venture out even in the most dangerous conditions.
It’s not just the commercial sector that feels the blow. My grandpa laments the way crabbing has changed. “I looked forward to going recreational crabbing,” he said. “[Because of the regulations,] I could not use the traditional pots; I had to use a hoop net. It’s very difficult and it’s not enjoyable.”
Unlike a crab trap, a hoop net cannot be left to soak, must be pulled up every two hours, and relies on the chance that a crab will swim into the net, making the process more labor-intensive and less fruitful.
The Trump administration has pushed for broad deregulation of American fisheries, arguing that loosening restrictions will boost economic growth. But near-total deregulation is not the answer either.
No one, not even the fishers who suffer the greatest regulatory burden, wants to see whales harmed. Each entanglement is a tragedy, not to mention a violation of the federal Endangered Species Act, and regulations are important protections. After all, the commercial whaling moratorium is what allowed the population to rebound after being hunted to near extinction.
A solution is underway, and I would advocate that we need to support small-scale crabbers in being a part of it. Pop-up crab traps, a new technology, eliminate any chance of entanglement—a win-win situation for both fishers and whales.
Unlike traditional crab pots, which are constantly tethered to a buoy by unattended lines, these traps are ropeless and use a remote-controlled, acoustic release system to bring traps from the ocean floor to the surface. This experimental gear is currently being tested locally just south of Pigeon Point in California, supported by the conservation group Oceana.
But because this technology is expensive, without financial support small fishers will be left behind as the “big guys” advance. Norton put it plainly: “If they require the parachute traps [pop-up gear], most local fishermen will be choked out.”
The Center for Biological Diversity is petitioning the federal government to require trap fisheries to convert to ropeless gear by 2026. I would like to expand on that petition: the U.S. Department of Commerce must also provide funding to help small-scale fishers—who have already invested tens of thousands of dollars in their traditional equipment— make this transition to whale-safe gear.
Stanley Ross’s boat, the Slam V, heads back to dock at the Sausalito Yacht Harbor. Why the V? Author Ross says, “It’s named for Stanley, Lloyd (my dad), Amanda (my aunt), and Martha (my grandma). It is a 1972 Betram 38 foot. My grandpa bought it as a salvage in the late ’80s; it was partially submerged and he completely restored it.”
As consumers, we can also change how we shop for crab. If we do not want to see a seafood market dominated by corporations with less accountability and care for the ecosystem, we must buy local, seasonal crab from trusted, small-scale fishers.
And we must support restaurants and markets that prioritize sustainable sourcing. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch is a helpful tool for people hoping to be more conscious consumers.
The future of the Bay Area’s crabbing culture depends on our ability to regulate with nuance and balance—recognizing that true ecological stewardship means protecting both marine wildlife and the human communities who live in harmony with them.
After that crab harvest with my grandpa, we sat around the dinner table with my family, cracking into the shells and slurping out every last succulent morsel. The impressive sight of the whale I had seen that morning was still at the forefront of my mind.
I believe that whales and fishers are not enemies. We are all part of an interconnected web that makes the beautiful, bountiful meal we shared possible.
Ross is an undergraduate student in Liz Carlisle’s course, “Food, Agriculture, and the Environment,” offered this spring at the University of California Santa Barbara. Civil Eats partnered with Carlisle on writing and editing guidance for this story.
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