The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, as expected, has indefinitely adopted regulations intended to reduce whale entanglements from deep vertical ropes that connect surface buoys with commercial crabbing gear.
The regulations, which are scheduled to be reviewed in two years, were unanimously endorsed by commissioners at a meeting in Salem on Friday. Without the action, the rules would have automatically expired at the end of the year.
The measures are aimed at reducing entanglements of humpback whales, which are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.
Although the number of known entanglements has remained low over the past decade, the rules are intended to provide special protections to whales in spring, when they migrate off the Oregon coast.
The measures, which affect Oregon’s Dungeness crab fishery, call for the reduction in the number of commercial crab pots by 20 percent, ban commercial crabbing at depths of more than 240 feet and restrict the amount of surface gear that any particular crabbing operation can deploy by May 1.
Some environmental groups had called for stricter measures. They argued that actual entanglements have not gone down since the rules were first implemented three years ago.
Their proposals called for cutting pot limits by 40 percent, instituting depth restrictions of 168 feet and initiating risk reductions on April 15. That date, they said, marks the time when whales are at peak entanglement risk.
— Dana Tims/YachatsNews
