Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , ,

Northern California commercial crab season delayed a second time

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
California Fish and Wildlife officials have delayed the start of commercial Dungeness crab fishing north of Sonoma County for a second time this year after routine testing showed the crab aren’t meaty enough to be harvested yet.
It will be at least New Year’s Eve before crabbers can range north of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line in search of the lucrative crustaceans already being caught in areas to the south, the agency said.
The highly regulated fishery opens to commercial crabbers Nov. 15 most years off the Sonoma Coast and in more southerly waters off San Francisco to Half Moon Bay, though the past two seasons have been disrupted by an algae-related toxin. This fall was the first time in three years that the season opened on time.The northern season was scheduled to open Dec. 1, conditional upon a minimum meat recovery rate from tested samples of Dungeness crab.
Underweight samples checked in November prompted a 15-day delay in the Northern California season. Additional samples tested Dec. 5 weren’t sufficiently filled out either, officials said.
Read more at: Northern California commercial crab season delayed a second time

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Four Bay Area residents arrested on suspicion of abalone poaching, black market sales 

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Four suspected poachers believed to have removed hundreds of red abalone illegally from the beleaguered North Coast fishery were arrested this week at their Bay Area homes at the conclusion of a five-month investigation, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The suspects are part of a larger crew used to collect abalone offshore of Sonoma and Mendocino counties for black market sales to a network of individuals, officials said. It does not appear the shellfish were sold to markets or restaurants.
The suspects — Thepbangon Nonnarath of Oakley, Dennis Nonnarath of El Sobrante and Thu Thi Tran and Cuong Huu Tran, both of San Jose — were arrested on a variety of charges that included conspiracy to commit a crime, as well as illegal commercial sales, falsification of abalone tags and exceeding the season limit of abalone.
Their arrests come as fishery regulators are grappling with a rapid decline in red abalone populations, thanks to shifting ocean conditions that have prompted significant starvation of the prized mollusks, due in part to exploding purple urchin populations that have grazed much of the ocean floor clean.
Read more at: Four Bay Area residents arrested on suspicion of abalone poaching, black market sales | The Press Democrat –

Posted on Categories Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , , , , Leave a comment on Bodega Bay lab at forefront of effort to save rare abalone species

Bodega Bay lab at forefront of effort to save rare abalone species

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The stacks of white, water-filled troughs in a small building at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory offer a bright spot in a landscape of often-grim news about California’s marine environment.
Roughly 2,000 tiny white abalone almost a year into life here represent the promise that an all-but-extinct sea mollusk might survive.

The product of a 4-year-old program that began with 18 wild white abalone plucked from the ocean depths near the Channel Islands 15 years ago, these small shellfish — from pencil-point- to almond-sized — are proof that captive breeding can work. Already, descendant abalone produced over three spawning seasons in affiliated science labs across the state are nearly equal in number to those believed to remain in the wild, where they are scattered so widely they no longer reproduce.

But with greater success in the lab each season, and a new round of spawning planned in early March, scientists in the program say they are just a few years away from beginning to test the survival of the young abalone out at sea, in hopes of eventually restoring some portion of the wild population.

“We may not bring it back anywhere close to what it was,” said Gary Cherr, director of the Bodega Marine Lab and principal investigator for the white abalone captive breeding program. “But if we can establish some self-sustaining populations up and down the coast … that would be a first. That would be really remarkable.”

Read more via Bodega Bay lab at forefront of effort to | The Press Democrat.