Dungeness crab: Bay Area's season will close April 30 - then reopen for whale-safe fishing
To protect humpback whales, the Bay Area’s commercial crab-fishing season will come to a close April 30, state officials announced Friday.
The order that came down from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s director, Meghan Hertel, applies to Zone 3, the waters from the Sonoma-Mendocino County line south to Pigeon Point near Pescadero in San Mateo County.
That will give commercial crabbers using traditional vertical lines - the ones that can entangle migrating whales - a little less than two weeks to wrap up their seasons in San Francisco and Half Moon Bay.
Hertel also authorized the Zone 3 use of whale-safe, pop-up gear by crabbers who hold experimental fishing permits a week later, at 7 a.m. May 7. That gear stores the rope and buoy with a trap on the seafloor until an acoustic release mechanism sends the buoy to the surface.
Conservation groups hailed the decisions.
"Extending the spring crab season with pop-up gear helps support an economically vital fishery while preventing whale entanglements," said Geoff Shester, Fishery Innovation Director for Oceana. “It's a true ‘win-win' for fisheries and wildlife.”
And Ben Grundy, with the Center for Biological Diversity, noted that the timing is particularly important, "with a marine heat wave building in the Pacific” and potentially driving whales closer to shore.
In 2024, pop-up gear was tested by 19 fishermen while waters were closed to conventional crab gear to prevent whale entanglements. They saw a 98% success rate and yielded $1.5 million worth of crab, according to Oceana.
The traditional 2025-26 season, which normally would have started Nov. 15, began Jan. 5, 2026 - with a 40% reduction in traps to protect whales.
Since 2015, there have been delays in all but one commercial Dungeness season in the Bay Area, mostly because of whale entanglements. Domoic acid, which could sicken anyone who eats the tainted crab, destroyed Northern California's 2015-2016 commercial season and created delays in other years.
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This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 2:08 PM.