Coastal Commercial Dungeness Crab Industry Survey

The survey asks for your license number in order to account for all of the responses and to avoid duplication, the information collected will only be distributed in summary form, individual responses will be considered confidential. Those without a proper license number will not be allowed to take the survey.

July 15, 2009

Dear Coastal Commercial Dungeness Crab License Owner:

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) would like to take the opportunity prior to the beginning of the 2009-2010 pre-season discussions, to solicit input from coastal commercial crab fishers regarding the state season opening structure.

WDFW has been negotiating annual management agreements with the coastal tribes since 1995, after the Rafeedie decision in U.S. Federal District Court upheld the rights of treaty tribes to harvest up to 50% of the harvestable shellfish resource. Coastal state-tribal management agreements have utilized head starts for tribal fisheries and closed areas for state fisheries as the primary tools to provide tribal fishers with the opportunity to harvest up to 50% of the crab in our co-managed areas north of Point Chehalis.

In recent years, head starts for tribal fishers, together with good crab meat recovery have resulted in a progressive opening of the state commercial crab season from south to north. Starting with the 2006-07 season, the area between the Washington - Oregon border and Klipsan Beach has opened with Oregon and California based on the results of pre-season testing, while the area north of Klipsan Beach has opened later. In the most recent 2008-09 season, the area north of Klipsan beach did not open until January 15, the same time that the area north of Destruction Island opened.

Your responses in the survey will inform WDFW shellfish managers the level of support among Washington’s coastal crab fishers for a temporary reduction in pot limits - if that would allow the area between Klipsan Beach and Destruction Island to open to the state fishery earlier than in the past few seasons.

Please take the time to complete the short survey

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Heather Reed
Coastal Marine Resources Policy Coordinator

cc: Phil Anderson
      Dan Ayres
      Carol Henry