AP Article - 2025 California EFP  

The gear lets fishermen use a remote-operated, acoustic release device to pop-up a crab pot from the ocean floor rather than have it tethered to a floating buoy. Pots can be strung together with ropes laid horizontally instead of vertically, so whales can pass over them while migrating through the area.

“If you remove the vertical line, you have removed the entanglement risk, and you have allowed a fishery to continue,” said Ryan Bartling, senior environmental scientist supervisor with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.