Saving Seafood

Conservation & Environment

Groundfish industry cleans 55,935 pounds of nets for recycling

June 8, 2026 — Four huge worn-out midwater trawl nets that in old times might have been buried in a landfill are instead being repurposed into usable new products and protection for Ukrainians from explosive Russian drones.

The efforts of over 100 volunteers from Seattle’s wild Alaska pollock catcher-processor fleet hunkered down in 80-degree heat at Terminal 91 on Thursday, May 28, offered both environmental and financial benefits to American Seafoods, Arctic Storm Management Group, Coastal Villages Region Fund, Glacier FIsh Company and Trident Seafoods, all members of the At-Sea Processors Association.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Tuna are rebounding. The work is far from done.

June 8, 2026 — Tuna offer a useful case study for World Ocean Day because their recovery has come through the least sentimental parts of conservation: quotas, enforcement, stock assessments, and years of difficult diplomacy.

By the early 2010s, several tuna stocks were in serious trouble. Atlantic bluefin had become a marker of overfishing. Pacific bluefin had fallen to a small fraction of its historic abundance. The risk was ecological and commercial. Governments were looking at the possible collapse of one of the world’s most valuable fisheries.

The response was slow, contested, and often technical. Regional fisheries bodies tightened catch limits, improved monitoring, began adopting automated harvest rules, and expanded electronic catch-documentation systems to make illegal and unreported fishing harder to hide. Fleets built around high catches had to accept lower quotas. The politics were difficult because the countries involved often had competing economic interests.

That is part of what makes the outcome worth studying. Atlantic bluefin are showing strong signs of recovery, backed by decades of tagging, catch data, and population modeling. Pacific bluefin reached a key rebuilding target years ahead of schedule. Across commercial tuna fisheries, a much larger share of global catch now comes from stocks assessed as being at healthy levels.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Thousands of dead squid wash up on Provincetown beach

June 8, 2026 — Thousands of dead squid washed up on the beach in Provincetown Harbor on Saturday, sparking wild speculation on social media.

Officials, however, said there’s no dangerous substance floating in the water for bathers to be concerned about.

“The squid are NOT dying from a toxic event, red tide, or pollution,” read the statement from the Provincetown harbormaster’s office. “This is a completely natural process!”

The phenomenon is a natural part of the life cycle for the Atlantic longfin inshore squid, officials said. Squid migrate close to shore to spawn offspring, and like many species, die shortly after spawning.

Usually, the “mass spawning die-off” happens underwater, where the bodies are quickly eaten by fish, crabs, and other marine predators. In this case, the wind and tide pushed the dying squid up onto the beach, officials said.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Hawaiʻi’s endangered false killer whales show signs of nutritional stress

June 5, 2026 — Some of Hawaiʻi’s endangered false killer whales are rapidly losing weight, a warning sign that warming oceans and limited prey may be pushing one of the nation’s smallest whale populations closer to extinction, according to research published in Endangered Species Research by a team including scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

The findings provide the first quantitative evidence that nutritional stress and competition with fisheries may be accelerating the decline of this iconic population, which now numbers fewer than 140 individuals.

The research—a partnership between the Pacific Whale Foundation (PWF), Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) at UH Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology and Okinawa Churashima Foundation—utilized high-resolution drone photogrammetry to track 68 whales (roughly half the remaining population) between 2019 and 2025.

Read the full article at the University of Hawaii News

New England Aquarium pens letter opposing changes to vessel speed limit

June 4, 2026 — In a letter sent to the assistant administrator for NOAA fisheries last week, the New England Aquarium says it opposes efforts by the National Marine Fisheries Service to deregulate vessel speed limits designed to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The speed limits were established in 2008 in management areas where right whales were observed during their migration. But earlier this year, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service’s posted an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking of a “possible deregulatory action” to its website.

In its letter, the aquarium cited studies that say vessel strikes remain a threat to the small population of right whales left on the East Coast.

Between 2020 and 2025, 22 right whale vessel strikes were detected in U.S. waters, of which six were fatal and two resulted in serious injuries.

Read the full article at Maine Public 

Congress should heed the Pacific Ocean’s super El Niño warning

June 4, 2026 — Listen up, lawmakers: The Pacific Ocean is trying to send you a message about the federal budget.

About once every two to seven years, the Pacific trade winds weaken and water temperatures shift, causing profound impacts for the global climate. The phenomenon is called “El Niño.” The latest data from the world’s largest ocean are telling us that a “super El Niño: will likely develop this year, possibly among the most powerful such events ever recorded.

The possibility of a strong El Niño should serve as a wake-up call to Congress. Lawmakers are now considering the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the agency known by the acronym NOAA (pronounced “Noah”), which serves as America’s eyes and ears on the world of weather.

If lawmakers choose to hollow out and treat this agency as a set of separable parts, the consequences for American communities and for the national economy will be dire.

Lawmakers in Washington must fully fund the agency’s work to monitor global weather patterns and keep Americans informed. By doing so, they will protect us all.

Read the full article at The Hill

Invasive blue catfish turn problem into fishery

June 2, 2026 — Fishermen and chefs hope to feed people and eradicate invasive blue catfish at the same time.

Blue catfish have become a manmade disaster in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. They’re an invasive species spreading throughout the region and eating whatever they can find. On the upside, they’re good eating, and some commercial fishermen and anglers are doing well catching them.

The problem began, as many do, with good intentions. In 1974, striped bass stocks were declining, and the state sought to provide a new species for anglers to catch. Chester F. Phelps, then executive director of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, oversaw the introduction of 300,000 blue catfish into the James River. More stocking followed, and in 1985, Virginia stocked blue catfish in the York River. Blue catfish, native to the Mississippi River watershed, seemed like a good fit for Virginia rivers.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Rare shark spotted off New England coast

June 1, 2026 — A species of large-bodied shark that nearly disappeared from Atlantic waters has been seen feeding on seals off the coast of New England, according to marine biologists.

Typically it’s great whites that are expected near the Massachusetts coast in the summertime. However, several sightings of what were believed to be great whites attacking seals actually turned out to be the elusive dusky shark, John Chisholm, adjunct scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, told ABC News.

Dusky sharks were nearly hunted to extinction in the late 20th century when commercial fisheries in the Gulf and Atlantic ramped up, according to Demian Chapman, senior scientist and director for the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida.

Meat and fins of many shark species are highly valued, and they are targeted and taken as bycatch in commercial and recreational fisheries, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. The demand for fins came primarily from China, Chapman told ABC News.

Read the full article at ABC News

New AI-powered thermal cameras could reduce vessel strikes on gray whales in San Francisco

June 1, 2026 — Researchers at the Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A.-based Benioff Ocean Science Lab helped develop an AI-powered thermal camera that can detect grey whales, and scientists are using the technology to reduce the risk of vessel strikes in San Francisco Bay.

The forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras use AI-powered technology developed by WhaleSpotter that detects the heat signature of warm-blooded whale blows at all hours of the day up to 4 nautical miles out, according to a release. The project was a collaboration between the Benioff Ocean Science Lab, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic Service, and whale experts at the Marine Mammal Center.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Why an immense marine heatwave off the US west coast has alarmed scientists

May 26, 2026 — An enormous marine heatwave off the US west coast is ringing alarm bells among ocean and atmospheric scientists as new data shows its ecological and environmental effects are intensifying.

The unusual area of warm water has persisted since peaking in size during September 2025 and still stretches thousands of miles from the California coastline – more than halfway across the Pacific – affecting a vast triangle-shaped region of oceanic habitats from Hawaii to British Columbia and southward to Mexico.

As recently as early April, marine scientists had hoped that the heatwave might diminish and the worst of its effects might be avoided. However, new projections released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) show it is now expected to expand and strengthen in the months to come.

Read the full article at The Guardian