Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay is bustling with activity as fishermen excitedly load traps, gather bait and tune up their boats in preparation for the recreational Dungeness crab season opener, which begins Nov. 3.
And many fishermen were set to be on the water, ready to drop their traps as soon as the clock strikes midnight.
“They’re all getting pumped up, it’s exciting,” said Porter McHenry, a longtime fisherman and president of the Half Moon Bay Seafood Marketing Association. “Usually the whole parking lot is full and people park trailers. It gets pretty crazy here and there’ll be at least a couple of hundred boats launching [on Saturday].”
Nov. 3 is the recreational season opener for crab. Commercial fishermen like McHenry will have to wait until Nov. 15, though they may have to wait longer than that depending on where they fish. McHenry plans to set his traps off the coast of Humboldt County, where the season has already been delayed because of domoic acid, a toxin produced by algae blooms in relatively warm waters that can accumulate in shellfish and potentially kill humans who consume it.
The algae blooms responsible for domoic acid are common in the summer and early fall and typically go away by November when crab season begins. But in recent years, warmer waters have lingered later into the year, as has the toxic algae.
One “hot crab” as it’s called was found near Bodega Bay, though the crabs tested south of Point Reyes are all clean by now, said Jim Anderson, a fisherman and member of the Dungeness Crab Task Force. In addition to testing for toxins, crabs are also tested for quality — they must contain a certain amount of meat before they can be harvested.
But in Half Moon Bay, there are so many recreational fishermen that quality assessments are based off of their catches.
“Everyone is waiting to see what the sport fishermen do in terms of the quantity and quality of their catch,” Anderson said.
Jim Delong, Antonio Abila and Chuck Bruemmer have been fishing for crab out of Half Moon Bay for 20 or so years and only do it for the first two weeks of the season before the commercial boats are allowed to go out.
“It’s more dodging buoys than anything else [once the commercial season opens] and it gets to be too crazy out there,” Delong said, adding that it’s not uncommon for other fishermen to steal crabs from their pods. “We just do it for fun. And for the free crab.”
Sport fishermen are limited to 10 crabs per person, which is not hard for them to reach during those first two weeks. But once the commercial season opens, their catches diminish significantly.
McHenry expects a slow season because last year he didn’t see a lot of “short crabs” — immature crabs that would, by now, be ready for harvest — but no one really knows what to expect until the recreational season is underway.
Anderson said he and his fellow fishermen have found countless 1-inch crabs this year and last year, but they won’t be ready for harvest until next year.
“It’s hard to predict, but it looks like a decent future,” he said.
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