So it's 5:30AM, and we're here in Bodega Bay, California,
to go crabbing.
It is— oh!
Wrong way again.
Turn left on Doran Park Road.
(light country music)
Winter is prime crabbing season for California,
but it may not be forever.
Over the past few years, seasons have been delayed
for weeks or even months.
And instead of just working, people in the fishing industry
find themselves debating warming seas,
toxic algae, Big Oil, and a lawsuit.
The whole business seems under siege.
I have a lot of questions,
but the answers are a few miles offshore
with a crab fisherman named Dick Ogg.
Oh no!
Okay, we'll see you soon.
Bye!
He said he was about to take off without us.
Dick's the captain of the Karen Jeanne,
and his crew are Sam Davis, McLean Vuilleumier, and
Nessa and Buster.
Hello!
Are you going to let us in?
(light country music)
We're driving roughly 20 miles out to a string of crab pots
that Dick's bringing in for the season.
And while Dick drives, the crew heads down for a nap.
You all set? All right.
I don't think anything's going to happen.
If it does, I'll call you.
There's a room under there!
He just disappeared into the floor.
Yeah!
(light acoustic music)
We left from Spud Point Marina in Bodega Bay.
We've been out for about an hour and 20 minutes so far.
And the sun's just come up.
And we're heading to just off the Point Reyes Lighthouse
where we're going to go collect some crab pots.
(light acoustic music)
Dick chose that spot partly because this past fall,
crabs further north tested positive
for elevated levels of domoic acid.
It's a neurotoxin that causes something
called amnesic shellfish poisoning,
which can lead to stomach problems,
but also dizziness, short-term memory loss,
seizures, and sometimes death.
So before each season starts,
California officials test crabs for it.
Amnesic shellfish poisoning has mainly been linked
with shellfish like razor clams and mussels.
California's never actually had a confirmed case from crabs.
And to keep it that way, officials closed off the area
with contaminated crabs for weeks.
You detect domoic acid, it delays the season.
What does that mean for your bottom line?
For how much crabs you catch, how much money you make?
The biggest impact probably to the public perception.
Are we eating tainted crabs?
Is this going to make us sick?
Closures cause other problems, too.
Smaller crabbing outfits might be forced
to fish more remote areas.
Delays could mean losing out on holiday crab sales
and might increase the risk
that whales get snagged on crab gear.
And everyone is forced to compete in tighter quarters.
You close off an area, now the guys can't fish here.
Let's say we know there's a lot
of crabs down at the point here.
Well, what do you think the guys are going to do?
They're going to say, “Hey, we're going to go down here.
We're going to all throw our gear out everywhere.”
I mean, you can darn near walk on the buoy sometimes,
there are so many people around you.
Domoic acid is produced by a type of algae
that blooms almost yearly up and down California.
These blooms aren't always toxic.
There is some combination of nutrients, light,
and, most importantly, warm water
that sets the stage for an outbreak.
And Dick's noticed that the water is getting warmer.
The water temperature, I'll show you right here,
the water temperature is 54 degrees right here.
Typically, this time of year,
as you get toward March and April,
we used to see 49 degrees.
In 2013, a blob of weirdly warm water
appeared off of the Pacific coast and stayed there for years.
It helped kick off a toxic bloom
that poisoned the food chain,
forcing California's Dungeness crab fishery
to close for months in the 2015-2016 season.
New details, Katie.
Dan, a quiet night here in the harbor,
and it's going to stay that way for who knows how long.
It was a federal fishery disaster that, by one estimate,
cost the state's Dungeness crab industry
at least $48 million.
But the big question is, going forward,
who should pay to help the industry adapt?
Scientists predict that these warm water events
could get more common as we pump more fossil fuel emissions
into the air.
So this fishery disaster could just be the beginning.
8AM, the sea sickness hits.
I'm just turning a little green, just a little bit.
I'm not going to puke.
(light acoustic music)
As we approach the crab pots,
the crew suits up and gets to work.
(light acoustic music)
McLean hooks the buoy, feeds it into the winch,
the guys reel it in, open it up,
dump the crabs, and measure them.
The small ones and the females go overboard,
and the males go into that tank.
Sam shows me how the whole process works.
So what are we doing here?
Like that? Yep.
And then measure him from this horn there
to that horn there.
Okay, horn to horn. So this one's too small.
So that one's small,
so he can go back. Your lucky day.
You're going back.
(light acoustic music)
By next season, the crabs we tossed back
might be big enough to keep,
but they also might be contaminated with domoic acid.
It's a scary enough prospect
that people in the fishing industry
are starting to connect some big dots.
The way they see it,
crab harvests are jeopardized by warmer water.
Warmer water is tied to climate change.
Climate change is tied to fossil fuels,
and fossil fuels are tied, of course, to Big Oil,
which is how a federation of professional fishing groups
decided to sue 30 fossil fuel companies.
They want Big Oil to pay up
for the harm to their livelihoods,
and they want help surviving climate change in the future.
(somber music)
We're on our way back,
and I asked Sam and McLean about the lawsuit
and about their future in fishing.
This is a dying industry.
I don't see too many small boats surviving in the future.
It's all going to be big industry and privatized eventually.
How does that make you feel?
Knowing that the industry you guys love
is kind of a dying one?
It's all I know.
It's a tradition for me, it's generational, so it's sad.
I don't want to see it go.
The truth is that McLean, really the whole team,
feels conflicted about who to blame
for warming ocean temperatures.
I would prefer that the oil companies
do things cleaner and better,
but we can't survive without them
because our boat runs on diesel
or hydraulic oil, and we couldn't survive without them.
We'd have to go back to sales.
Big Oil has known since at least the 1960s
that our fossil fuel emissions could warm up the planet.
But over the past few years,
investigative journalists and researchers
have discovered a concerted effort
by the fossil fuel industry to downplay the danger.
In private communications
and scientific papers, for example,
Exxon Mobile acknowledged the reality of climate change.
In mass-market ads for the public,
the company promoted doubt.
And all the while, this manufactured debate has raged on,
Big Oil has continued to dominate the market.
So it's true. This crew uses a diesel boat.
But at this point, they don't really have a choice.
When are we going to get to see all this footage on TV?
When the guys are done cleaning the bait cups,
they head inside where there's a sandwich waiting for them.
I… don't.
(light acoustic music)
Feeling better?
Yeah, yeah. I'm feeling better.
Had some ginger ale.
(light acoustic music)
It's around two in the afternoon.
We reach a dock where the team
unloads their gear and the crabs.
Then, it's back to the Spud Point Marina.
Dick's noticed the ocean changing,
but he's not sure who's to blame for the domoic acid,
and he's not sure what to think about the lawsuit.
He's affiliated with it
through his local fishing association,
and he's generally supportive of the effort.
But mostly, he just wants crabbing to survive,
whatever it takes.
It's a difficult industry at best.
The monetary investment is just massive.
It's absolutely massive.
And just to get started, it's difficult.
And then to have a problem like domoic acid come into place,
it could be devastating to a person trying to start.
So we have to fight for everything we can.
The environmental portion of this,
it's just so unpredictable.
Every single year is different,
and we're challenged with where are we going to go
if this area is closed?
How are we going to bring our money in
if we have to travel and stay down in a certain area
and we can't come back home?
I mean, things like that
are things that we have to consider all the time.
(light acoustic music)
At 2:30PM,
the Karen Jeanne pulls back into the marina.
The day's work is done.
And one of neatest things
is when you get to turn the boat off,
and everything goes silent.
You know you're home.
(boat engine whirring)
And we're home, nice and quiet.
Right, Buster!
Huh?
You guys happy because we're home?
No more sandwiches for you, Buster.
Old stinker.