ODFW Commission adopts rules to try to reduce humpback whale entanglements with commercial crab fleet

By MIA MALDONALDO/Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon’s Dungeness crabbers could begin testing ropeless pot technology next spring in an effort to save whales from entanglements that can injure or kill them.

The state since 2021 has taken steps to reduce whale entanglements, including requiring additional late season crabbing tags and limiting how many crabbing pots fishermen can use and how deep they can place them, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife marine resources program manager Justin Ainsworth told the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission during its monthly meeting Friday in Salem.

But with whale entanglements increasing, commissioners are turning to two new tools to see if they can reduce deaths. Rules the commission adopted Friday will require fishermen to share their vessel location with state fishery managers to better track where gear is set and if their location is related to entanglements. The commission also approved allowing crabbers to test ropeless crabbing gear already used by some fishermen in California.

Traditional commercial crabbing gear requires traps to sit on the ocean floor, each attached to a vertical line connected to buoys on the surface. Whales can get entangled in those lines.

The pop-up gear the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife can begin authorizing as soon as spring 2027, however, stores the rope and buoy with the trap on the seafloor. Fishermen can set a timer or trigger a release mechanism that allows the line to uncoil and buoy to surface to retrieve the catch.

Pop-up gear is currently not allowed because pot and trap gear must be marked at the surface with a buoy. The proposed rule would allow the ODFW to issue some experimental fishing gear permits as soon as spring 2027, and the commission could consider wider authorization if the tests prove effective.

The Dungeness crab fishery is Oregon’s most valuable ocean fishery, fishermen had a record-breaking payout of $97.1 million in 2024-25, but there is growing concern over whales getting tangled in crab gear.

Whale numbers

At least 400 whales have been caught in fishing gear off the coast of Oregon, Washington, and California between 2015 and 2025, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service – the great majority in California where there are more humpback whales, especially in the San Francisco area.

Humpback whales are also the most commonly entangled whale species because their feeding season coincides with spring crabbing season, and warming ocean waters push their feeding grounds closer to shore where commercial crab traps are dropped.

Oregon has two humpback whale populations that feed off its coast. One breeds off the coast of Mexico and is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The other, which breeds off the Pacific coast of Central America, is listed as endangered. At least four humpback whales were entangled in 2025 in Oregon commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear — the highest number of humpback whales confirmed entangled in Oregon crab gear in any single year to date.

California began issuing experimental permits for pop-up gear in 2023. Earlier this year, the state authorized it for more widespread use during times and areas when the fishery is closed to conventional gear due to entanglement risk.

Brand Little, a commercial fisherman based in San Francisco, said he was dead set against pop-up gear until he tried it.

“It was the first year they closed salmon in California,” Little said, referring to 2023 when California canceled the salmon season after seeing historically low population numbers. “We didn’t have anything else to do… so we went out to prove (pop-up gear) wouldn’t work, and it did work. So we’re like, ‘Well, what the hell?’ And it’s just kind of been a snowball since then.”

Now, Little has enough pop-up gear to use his 450 pots, and buying the equipment wasn’t as expensive as he originally thought.

The units themselves are expensive, Little said. They cost about $1,000 per pop-up unit. Little wasn’t willing to spend $450,000 for all his pots, but he was willing to spend money to put two $1,000 pop-up units on both sides of a string of 25 crab traps — a technique known as longlining.

“I think the average price spent to do it was $30,000,” Little said. “Every single person that invested their $30,000 had a return on investment in the first couple of weeks of using the gear.”

Oregon is positioned differently than California, where seasons usually start in mid-December and give the majority of the fleet a three-month window for crabbing. The Oregon crabbing effort drops substantially by March or April but is allowed until mid-August.

Only fishermen using pop-up gear can fish for Dungeness crab between all of California’s crabbing season, which typically lasts from mid-November to the end of June.

Stephen Melz, an early pop-up gear adopter also based in San Francisco, said the gear gives California fishermen the alternative to keep fishing even when whales move close to the coast.

“If given the option to fish or not fish, I think they’re going to want to fish,” Melz said. “That’s what it comes down to, right?”

Monitoring boats

While the pop-up gear is optional, ODFW would require fishermen in February to adopt a monitoring system that shares their vessel location via cellular networks with state fishery managers so they can enforce closed areas and understand fleet locations.

The agency has secured federal funding to help reimburse permit holders up to $800 for equipment. Still, several Oregon fishermen argued Friday that the requirement would place new burdens on small businesses.

“Our boats are routinely hit by waves and sometimes completely underwater,” said Ray Monroe, a Pacific City fisherman. “Electronics on these dories are constantly destroyed, and space is extremely limited. Installing another device that is expensive, fragile and exposed to the harshest conditions on the coast is not reasonable.”

The technology is designed to resist harsh weather, Ainsworth said, pointing to similar vessel monitoring systems in Washington and California.

Cary Johnson, a fisherman in Astoria, asked the commission to exempt small vessels from the requirement.

“None of us want to see whales entangled in our gear,” Johnson said. “It’s a bad look for our industry. We’re trying to do whatever we can to avoid that.”

Conservation advocates supported the new rules but said Oregon still needs to do more to protect whales.

They’re opposed to the department’s draft conservation plan, which outlines measures the state will take to protect whales. It proposes allowing the entanglement of up to 67 humpback whales over a 15-year period, or roughly four humpback whales a year.

Conservationists argued the plan would normalize the worst year for humpback whales rather than advance conservation measures and gear modifications to reduce whale entanglements. And those are just the confirmed entanglements, said Ben Enticknap, a senior scientist and the Pacific campaign director at Oceana, an ocean advocacy nonprofit.

“The National Marine Fisheries Service scientists are estimating only about one in five entanglements are detected,” he said. “The department is not recognizing that piece right now that there’s these unobserved entanglements, and that needs to be made clear and incorporated into the conservation plan.”

• Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit Salem-based news service that focuses its reporting on Oregon state government, politics and policy.