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Sustainability in Dungeness Crab Fisheries:
Three of the major non-profit environmental organizations who provide seafood guides to consumers have all
placed Dungeness Crab at the top of their lists for sustainable seafood choices: Monterey Bay Aquarium, Natural
Resources Defense Council, and Environmental Defense. The West Coast Dungeness Crab fishery was held up
repeatedly as an example of a sustainably managed fishery during the Congressional hearings for the passage of
the Sustainable Fisheries Act in 1996. Why is this?
Crab-pots are more selective than most net or line fishing gear, and mortalities are low. Thus there is less waste
of crabs or other sea life. Pot fisheries allow female, juvenile or undersize crabs to be returned to the sea to mature
and breed. Returning the females and juveniles means that Dungeness crab stocks have a much better chance of
maintaining themselves than in other fisheries where only the total volume taken out of that fishery’s biomass can
be controlled.
What About “Ghost Fishing”?
In the early 1990s, concerns were raised about lost crab gear that lay on the sea bed, entrapping and killing other
sea life. In heavy storms, fishermen may lose some of their crab pots. At a few hundred dollars per pot, obviously,
this is not ideal for the fisherman either, and so there is a powerful incentive for fishermen themselves to reduce
pot loss by mending or replacing their lines and other gear. There was very little scientific assessment done to
determine how much “ghost fishing” was occurring. One small scale study in Canada proposed that the number
could be as high as 7% of all crabs landed (brought in to port). However, since then, new regulations require
that all crab pots have a biodegradable line that disintegrates to allow any lost pots to open, greatly reducing
"ghost fishing" of pots that become cut from their lines and accidentally sink to the sea bed.
What About Over-fishing?
The historical landings data from Oregon and Washington suggest that Dungeness Crab is a very well-managed
fishery in these areas. Commercial Dungeness Crab landings have followed more or less a 10 year bell curve
pattern over the past 60 years. A year of higher landings is usually followed by a declining trend for a few years,
followed by an upswing for a few years. This is in stark contrast to other fisheries that have showed long-term
declines with no upswings. There is hardly a fishery anywhere in the world today that has zero concerns about
over-fishing. However, over-capacitation of the Dungeness Crab fishing fleets from Alaska to Northern California
are controlled by several means. These include catch quotas, limited entry permits, and also limits on the total
number of pots a boat may use. All fisheries employ closures of fishing during molting/spawning seasons. In
Washington State, the Dungeness Crab catch is split equally between First Nations fishermen and non-tribal
fishermen. While as yet there are no limited entry permits for tribal fishermen in Washington, the tribal crab
fishermen catch less individually (on average) than the state fishermen, and the local tribes collaborate to open
and close tribal crab fisheries on limited time schedules to ensure that the fishing effort is controlled. Sport, or
recreational fishing plays a role that is harder to document and quantify than commercial crab fishing, where
there is a higher level of oversight. Constant vigilance and good fishery data will always be necessary, no matter
how ecologically friendly a fishery may appear; the state agencies play a key role managing fishery data and
their budgets are funded in part by taxes that wholesale fish dealers pay on each transaction they make with
a fishing boat.