Innovative new crab trap designs will make it possible to keep fishing the crustacean when whales are present.
Along with his fellow fishermen, he bristles at being demonized by the Center for Biological Diversity, whose messaging has lacked climate change context and cast fishermen as bad actors, he says. “We’re being looked at as people trying to destroy the ocean when we’re the conservationists and that’s our living,” he says. “Why would we damage it? We’re very conscious of what we’re doing. We’re trying to make things better, and we’ve truly done a good job.” TESTING STANDOFF Prunedale’s David Toriumi fishes out of Santa Cruz and also serves on the working group, representing Monterey Bay. He’s even conducted tests of ropeless gear in hopes of saving more of a shrinking crab season. That alienates some fishermen who flinch at the attempt to have the gear forced on them, and Toriumi reports feeling scared of vigilante retribution when he enters various ports. But he reserves his biggest frustration for the CBD and its decision to stop engaging with the working group. “It’s frustrating because they don’t crab, they’re not on the boat,” he says. “They haven’t come out to talk to us fishermen and see our struggles. They just want to chop us down. They’re saying we’re murderers and we’re not doing our job right and not having a conversation.” He wishes CBD would focus more on container boat collisions with whales. “It’s mind boggling they’re picking on small guys when big corporations are literally mowing over whales,” he says. But the good news is they are; the Center for Biological Diversity filed a legal petition with the Biden Administration requesting speed limits for vessels off California, to accomplish precisely that. CBD senior attorney Kristen Monsell sounds well-acquainted with pushback from fishermen. “We recognize change is hard and people don’t like it,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean change shouldn’t happen.” She believes requiring ropeless traps by law is the path forward. “Ropeless fishing is the only way to eliminate entanglement while allowing fishing to continue,” she says. “That future isn’t going to be realized unless that is mandated. The rules on the books aren’t cutting it. We need to do more to save all these amazing critters.” That leads to a final plot twist that, in turn, leads to a place of hope. Back before the CBD introduced the Whale Entanglement Prevention Act to mandate ropeless compliance in California, crab fishermen were voluntarily participating in at least three different ropeless technology testing projects along the state’s coast. When the idea of non-
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optional acquiescence was introduced, many of them promptly backed out—if they weren’t getting a say in their sentence, they weren’t participating in the trial. Oceana’s Shester gets that. “I don’t think it’s productive to mandate something we don’t know will work,” he says. “It has made the collaboration more difficult.” Kim Sawicki does too. Through the company Sustainable Seas Technology, she works with fishermen around the world—ropeless traps are also seeing deployment on the East Coast, in Australia and in Canada—to develop gear without long ropes and with constant collaboration. “I work with these fishermen day in and day out, and they’re a big part of the process in providing tips and tweaks so we can adapt different devices to the way they fish,” she says. “To make something mandatory when we’re trying to get fishermen interested and involved is counterproductive.” A funny thing happens when they do try out the gear, she adds. “When fishermen start getting their hands on the gear, they come up with better ways to use it,” she says. “As soon as they start playing around with it, their negative attitudes, reluctance and fear go away.” Fishermen, Shester, Sawicki and the Center for Biological Diversity do agree on something: Government, nonprofit funders, market factors and trap innovators are all relevant to making new crab technologies affordable. They just disagree on how to get there, and aren’t currently dialoguing on how to do it. Hopefully, in coming months, more collaboration—and a longer crab season—are on the menu. Mark C. Anderson is a roving writer, explorer and photographer based in Monterey County. Follow and/or reach him on Twitter and Instagram @ MontereyMCA.
