This is part three of a six-part series.

If you missed the first two episodes, go back and listen so you'll be caught up on the story up to now.

In today's episode, we're going to look at how this group of people became the first industry to sue big oil.

Previously on Dread.

It was just awful. I mean, we couldn't pay the bills. It was just a nightmare. We almost lost everything.

It was pretty impressive. We took Christmas to come and hit it like,

you know what? This is getting serious. We're thinking, oh, we'll be up by December 1st.

We have to do something and that's something.

To date has been closing and waiting multiple years for federal disaster assistance that may not even be delivered.

That's Noah Oppenheim, Executive Director of PCFFA, the West Coast Fisherman's Trade Group.

When Crabers finally started their 2015 season after a lengthy delay,

they were desperate to make up for lost time. Then word got out that crabs were congregating off

the central coast near Moro Bay and Monterey. So Crabers flocked to the area, like seagulls to a beach

picnic. I grabbed down a half-moving bay for a month and then we picked everything up and

trucked all our gear down to Moro Bay and there were some crabs down there and we spent the rest of

the season there. Ben Platt wasn't the only one to make a mad dash for the central coast.

The Dungeonous Crab Fisheries is what they call a Derby Fishery. So if a boat wants to travel

and fish in a different district, it can. But that meant that a lot more crab pots, those large

round cages that Crabers trapped crab in were in these small bays, along with crab boats and

the crab buoys that crab pots are attached to. So add more buoys and rope to these crowded bays.

It was also later in the year than usual, which meant the Crabers were about to collide with

whale migration season. And at the same time, the warm water hadn't just impacted the algae

...