Friday April 8, 2022
Newport News Times —
Nearly everything you could possibly want to know about Oregon’s iconic Dungeness crab industry is now available in one document, thanks to the efforts of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Oregon Dungeness Crab Fishery Management Plan is a 177-page document released last week by ODFW, which spent the last four years developing it to be the most comprehensive catalog of Oregon’s ocean commercial, bay commercial and recreational crab fisheries to date. It includes overviews of the fishery’s history, regulation, sustainability and more.
“The purpose of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Fishery Management Plan (FMP) is to provide management transparency and facilitate good governance,” a statement accompanying the plan’s release reads. “This plan provides a comprehensive assessment of the current knowledge on Dungeness crab and description of the current management strategy for the harvest of the resource. The fishery currently faces a range of complex management challenges that are also described throughout the FMP, along with the tools and strategies employed to address them.”
Work on the plan started in 2018 with its public input component wrapping up last year before the plan’s final iteration was released on March 30.