Oregon, Washington agree to rein in fishing off each other's coasts

By: PEGGY ANDERSEN - Associated Press | Saturday, October 8, 2005 7:32 PM PDT ∞

SEATTLE -- Oregon and Washington have reached a reciprocal agreement to restrict commercial fishing for Dungeness crab in federal waters off each other's coasts, officials said Saturday.

Neither state has authority over the other's commercial crab fishermen, but both profit from the arrangement approved Saturday by Washington's Fish and Wildlife Commission, meeting in Olympia, and on Friday by the Oregon panel.

The deal requires Oregon vessels crabbing in federal waters off Washington -- beyond the state's three-mile jurisdiction and within the 200-mile federal boundary -- to have Washington licenses, and vice versa, said Phil Anderson, special assistant to Jeff Koening, head of Washington's Fish and Wildlife Department.

"The principal thing here is two states have taken this action, which will enable us independently to take additional actions to stabilize the economic well-being of our coastal commercial crab fishery," Anderson said in a telephone interview from Olympia.

Data from Oregon indicates its crab fishers take more than 1 million pounds annually out of federal waters adjacent to Washington, and deliver the catch to Oregon ports, he said. Conversely, Washington crabbers have been taking about a half million pounds in federal waters off Oregon.

Dual-licensed vessels will be able to fish off both states.

One of the incentives for Washington state was that as tribal crab fleets develop capacity to harvest half Washington state's shellfish -- a right affirmed in 1994 -- "more and more of our boats will be going down to Oregon," Anderson said.

Still-expanding tribal crab fleets are not taking an equal share yet, "but they're moving in that direction," he said. The agreement also clears the way for Washington to look into buying back some commercial licenses in response to the growth of tribal fisheries.

"To me, this is probably the most significant action taken by the two commissions to benefit the crab fisheries off both states," Anderson.

Both states can also now work to "rationalize" the crab fisheries -- now race-for-fish marathons. In Washington, which has an eight-month Dungeness season, "50 percent of our harvest is taken within the first 15 to 17 days," he said.

Such stampedes -- sometimes in poor weather -- can put vessels at risk. And huge early catches undermine prices and can lead to canned and frozen crab, because the fresh harvest would overwhelm the market.

"We're talking about 10 million pounds of crabs from Washington alone coming onto the marketplace," he said, and as much as 30 million pounds within the first month of the Oregon season.

Commercial boats with California licenses can still fish in federal waters off all three states, he said, but Oregon and Washington officials are hoping that will change.

"We are hoping this action taken by the two northern states will cause them to take similar action ... restricting areas where their licenses will be valid," Anderson said, though at this point the number of California boats heading north is very small.

In California, such rules -- or authority to impose them -- must come from the state Assembly.

Jon Englund, an Oregon fish and wildlife commissioner, requested a review of this winter's crab fishing and California's resolve to join in managing the harvests.

"This is going to be very tough on the north coast crabbers," Englund said Friday. "We don't want to go it alone."

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday night vetoed legislation that would have tightened regulation on Dungeness crab fishing. The bill, by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have restricted the number of crab traps, or "pots," to 250 per boat to prevent the Central California fishery from being cleaned out early in the season.

In his veto message, Schwarzenegger, who rejected a similar measure last year, called the 250-pot limit "arbitrary" and encouraged the Legislature to write legislation that would give the Fish and Game Commission more power to manage the fishery.

Associated Press Writer Terence Chea contributed to this report from San Francisco.

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