PD Editorial: Another bleak crab season for local ports

December should be a hectic time in Bodega Bay, with fishing boats zipping in and out of the harbor to service traps and offload Dungeness crab.

But for the second straight year the small port is dismally quiet.

Much of the fishing fleet is idle, and stacks of crab pots stand like sentries alongside Westshore Road near Spud Point Marina, awaiting the start of the commercial crab fishing season, delayed again because high levels of domoic acid, a potentially fatal neurotoxin, have been detected in crustaceans off the North Coast.

“Look at what’s happening at Spud Point - there’s probably 10,000 pots sitting out there. Those are guys who aren’t going out,” fishermen Charlie Beck told Staff Writer Angela Hart. “Our small fishing fleet is getting destroyed. Last year was the worst season that we’ve ever seen, and this year it’s looking pretty bleak, especially for the smaller boats.”

It’s a sharp blow for the North Coast’s beleaguered fishing industry and for small communities like Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg where the economy and the well-being of many families is dependent on commercial and recreational fishing.

Dungeness crab is more than a holiday staple in Northern California. In most years, it is the most lucrative of the state’s commercial fisheries.

Crab generated about $86 million for California fishermen in 2013, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. In 2014, an off year, the catch was still $67 million. Last year, with the start of season delayed until late March, leaving just three months for commercial crabbing, revenue fell to just $33 million, less than half of the five-year average.

Unlike last year, when the entire coast was closed due to elevated levels of domoic acid, crabbing presently is allowed north of Humboldt Bay and south of Point Reyes. But that’s too far for most small operators who must balance time and fuel cost against any possible catch.

We hope that oceans improve and concentrations of domoic acid drop enough to open the coast before this becomes another lost season for much of the local fishing fleet. But more trouble is on the horizon for ocean fisheries, a traditional source of healthy and sustainable food.

The state Fish and Game Commission is poised to slash catch limits for abalone because of declining numbers, and some salmon fisheries are collapsing after a prolonged drought. Moreover, previously stalled efforts by a Republican-controlled Congress to divert more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Central Valley farms - another serious threat to endangered salmon - may finally succeed with the election of President Donald Trump.

Speaking to supporters in Fresno last spring, Trump declared that “there is no drought,” adding that “it is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”

Ridiculous? Not when that water is a lifeline for anadromous fish that spawn in fresh water and migrate through the delta to the Pacific Ocean.

Protecting that vital water supply must be a priority in the next Congress for California’s senators, Dianne Feinstein and newly elected Kamala Harris. It’s an irreplaceable lifeline for fisheries and the struggling communities they support.