The inception of the commercial fishery occurred before the turn of the century with first recorded landings in 1885. The sport fishery has an equally long history and aboriginal harvests of Dungeness crab precede the discovery of North America by Europeans. Crabs are most commonly harvested using traps or ring nets. Sport and Native fishers may use any of these methods. Commercial fishers generally use traps or ring nets.
Traps are frames covered with web to form an enclosure.
Crabs gain access to the enclosure through a tunnel or door. The doors or tunnels may be triggered to form a one-way entrance. Ring nets are simply a circular frame holding a bag of web. Crab are captured in the web bag when they cross the edge of the frame and the frame is lifted. Traps and ring nets are baited with fish, squid, clams, offal, or fish food pellets.