SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Friday that he signed legislation meant to bring down the record numbers of whales getting caught in fishing gear meant for Dungeness crabs, causing unknown numbers of the entangled mammals to drown or starve.
The Democratic governor approved the bill that allows fishermen to collect abandoned and lost crab pots – the cage-like contraptions used to catch the crustaceans – in the off-season for a bounty, paid for by those who lost the gear.
Crab fishermen joined environmental groups in backing the legislation after federal agencies logged 61 reports of entangled whales off the West Coast last year, and 40 more by midsummer of this year, the majority of them off California. That compares with a previous average of eight or fewer whale entanglements a year.
“It’s a huge, huge increase” in whales caught in crabbing gear in particular, said Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the Center for Environmental Diversity environmental group.
“We’re talking about really slow, painful deaths” for whales snared by hundreds of pounds of crab pots, lines and floats, she said.