Commercial Dungeness crab season delayed until December 16th on the North Coast

HUMBOLDT COUNTY, Calif. (KIEM) — The commercial Dungeness crab season in Northern California has been delayed and includes Humboldt, Del Norte, and Mendocino Counties.

The season is delayed until December 16th.  If there’s not an additional delay, the gear setting period will begin December 13th.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says samples collected at the end of October and beginning of November did not yield valid results because the total poundage of what was collected didn’t meet the minimum criteria.

This is the 4th year in a row crab season has been delayed on the North Coast. According to environmental scientist Christy Juhasz, the last several seasons have also been delayed because of meat quality.

“However, this year the issue was that we were not getting the minimum volume that is described in our testing protocol that is agreed upon by the Tri-state manager. We continue to see low volume, so based on those results we’re going to go back, delay the season and re-test trying to capture that minimum volume,” Juhasz says.

CDFW says they’re hoping they can conduct another round of testing on or around December 1st.