Oregon Greenlights Ropeless Gear Trials Ahead of 2027 Crab Season

Oregon commercial crabbers will begin trialing ropeless fishing gear next spring under new rules aimed at reducing deadly whale entanglements in the state's Dungeness crab fishery.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted rules giving the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) authority to issue experimental permits for the gear as early as spring 2027. The commission also approved a separate requirement that crabbers install vessel monitoring systems so regulators can track fleet locations and enforce seasonal closures.

Conventional crab gear relies on hundreds of traps sitting on the seafloor, each tethered by a vertical line to a surface buoy. Those lines are a major hazard for whales, which can become entangled. In late July, a humpback whale was freed roughly 20 miles off the Oregon coast after an entanglement left it unable to feed — and it wasn't expected to survive.

Pop-up gear removes that risk by storing the line and buoy on the seafloor with the trap itself. Fishermen trigger a release — by timer or remote signal — that lets the buoy surface only when they're ready to retrieve their catch, leaving the water column clear the rest of the time. The technology is currently barred under Oregon law, which requires all pot and trap gear to be marked at the surface at all times; the new rule creates a path for ODFW to permit limited experimental use, with broader authorization possible if the pilot goes well.

Entanglement remains the leading cause of serious injury and death for whales along the West Coast. The National Marine Fisheries Service recorded at least 400 whale entanglements off Washington, California and Oregon between 2015 and 2025. Humpback whales are hit hardest, in part because their feeding season overlaps with crab season and because warming waters are pushing their feeding grounds closer to shore, right into areas where crab gear is set. Oregon confirmed at least four humpback whale entanglements in its Dungeness crab gear in 2025 alone — the highest count on record for the state.

California has been down this road already, issuing its first experimental pop-up gear permits in 2023 and expanding authorization this year for use during whale-risk closures. San Francisco-based commercial fisherman Brand Little told the commission he was initially "dead set" against the technology until California's 2023 salmon closure left him little choice but to try it. He now fishes all 450 of his pots with pop-up gear, using a longlining approach — two $1,000 release units bookending a string of 25 traps — that brought his cost down to roughly $30,000 per string, which he said fishermen recouped within weeks. Unlike Oregon, California's crabbers using pop-up gear can now fish through stretches of the season when conventional gear is barred entirely, giving the technology a clearer financial upside there.

The pop-up gear rule is optional, but the vessel monitoring requirement is not — crabbers must have the tracking systems installed by February, though ODFW has federal funding to reimburse permit holders up to $800 toward the equipment. Some fishermen pushed back, arguing the mandate adds cost and risk for small operators. Pacific City fisherman Ray Monroe said the small, wave-battered dories used in Oregon's fleet aren't well suited to more onboard electronics. ODFW's Marine Resources Program Manager, Justin Ainsworth, responded that the monitoring units are built to withstand rough conditions and are already in use in Washington and California. Astoria fisherman Cary Johnson asked the commission to consider exempting smaller vessels, while stressing that fishermen share the goal of avoiding entanglements.

original story by Mia Maldonado, originally published August 17, 2026 by Oregon Capital Chronicle,