June 19, 2026 — In the Senate Wednesday, Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith introduced the ‘Save our Shrimpers’ Act.
This is legislation aimed at preventing taxpayer dollars from helping finance foreign shrimp farms.
Reducing Bycatch in Shrimp Trawls Through Education
June 19, 2026 — NOAA’s Gear Monitoring Team has made significant progress improving and maintaining turtle excluder device compliance in the Gulf of America shrimp fishery. TEDs allow shrimp to pass through the bars to the end of the net. This allows fishers to maintain catch levels, while larger marine animals like sea turtles get “excluded” from the net.
Our gear experts cover the entire Gulf—from Key West, Florida to Brownsville, Texas. Through their efforts conducting outreach, education, and enforcement training within fishing communities, TED compliance rates in the Gulf shrimp fishery now exceed 90 percent
Refresher for Law Enforcement
The team provides training to state and federal enforcement agencies to improve understanding of TED requirements and promote consistency in enforcement. This year we provided refresher training to:
- Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers and the U.S. Coast Guard near Marco Island, Florida
- Texas Parks and Wildlife and U.S. Coast Guard in South Texas
- Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries officers
NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement coordinated and participated in these training sessions with our team and state law enforcement partners. This allowed officers to gain proficiency in TED requirements and gain on the water experience measuring the devices.
“We conducted a classroom portion of the training to review regulations and provide hands-on practice,” said Jason Letort, gear specialist and Gear Monitoring Team lead. “This was followed by a day of offshore patrols several miles west of Marco Island and Naples, Florida, where we boarded seven vessels and checked TED compliance on all of them. This allowed the officers to gain real experience checking TEDs on the back deck of a shrimp boat, which they can’t get in a classroom.”
ALASKA: Feds sending $99 million in aid to address three declared Alaska fishery disasters
June 19, 2026 — Alaska has been allocated about $99 million in new fishery disaster assistance, making up the majority of the $123.6 million in aid that federal officials on Wednesday said is headed to Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.
In Alaska, the money is to address previously declared fishery disasters for Bering Sea snow crab and Chignik and Cook Inlet salmon harvests, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fishery service said.
For the lost snow crab harvest of the 2023-24 winter, the second year that the usually lucrative fishery was canceled because of low stocks, NOAA Fisheries is allocating $75.2 million in aid. That follows a 2024 allocation of $39.5 million in aid for the lost harvest in the winter of 2022-23.
Snow crab harvests have now resumed, though at much lower levels than in past years.
For the Chignik salmon disaster that occurred in 2022, the agency is allocating $18.5 million in aid. For the declared disaster for the 2023 Upper Cook Inlet east side setnet salmon harvest, the agency said it is allocating $5.8 million in aid.
ALASKA: Partners hatch a project to return Alaska king crab stock to health
June 19, 2026 — An ambitious campaign is underway to boost the population of lucrative red king crab in Alaska’s Bering Sea.
The project centers on a newly constructed shellfish hatchery housed in the Trident Seafoods processing plant at St. Paul, a remote island community at the heart of the Bering Sea. St. Paul has long depended on crab landings to support the local economy, but the stocks have struggled in recent years.
The commercial crab fleet and crabbing ports such as St. Paul suffered a particularly heavy blow with the closure of the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery in 2021 and 2022. The fishery has since reopened, but catch quotas remain small.
Now a partnership of researchers, agencies, nonprofits, and industry are taking bold action to strengthen the red king crab stock. It comes after decades of research on how best to hatch crab.
In early May, two chartered fishing boats, the Confidence and the Pacific Mariner, used pot gear to capture around 30 adult gravid red king crab – females full of eggs – for the St. Paul hatchery. The crab were placed individually into tanks. The eggs have since hatched, and the juvenile crab are expected to be released into the sea toward the end of July. Exactly where remains to be determined.
ALASKA: Murkowski and Sullivan Welcome Funding for Fisheries
June 19, 2026 — The following was released by the Office of U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski:
Today, U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) welcomed the announcement of roughly $99 million in funding allocated for Alaska fishery disasters from the U.S. Department of Commerce. This is a step toward funding for three Alaska fisheries that experienced disasters from 2022-2024. NOAA Fisheries will now work with the State of Alaska and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission to develop a spend plan.
“Our fishing industry is part of the beating heart of coastal Alaska, but seemingly every fishery over the last decade has been hit hard by disasters beyond their control,” said Senator Murkowski. “This is one step in the process, but one step closer to ensuring fishermen, their crews, seafood processors, and communities impacted by these fishery disasters receive the funding they need. I sincerely appreciate Secretary Lutnick and those at the Department of Commerce for their commitment to helping our fishermen.”
“Alaska’s subsistence harvesters, commercial fishermen, and fishing communities have endured a series of fishery disasters and stock collapses beyond their control, threatening livelihoods and entire coastal economies,” Senator Sullivan said. “I have been pushing to resolve these disaster declarations and get this relief into the hands of Alaskans who need it. This nearly $100 million allocation—roughly 80 percent of the funding announced today—will provide critical support to those affected by the Bering Sea snow crab, Chignik salmon, and Upper Cook Inlet East Side Setnet salmon disasters. I want to thank Secretary Lutnick and the Department of Commerce for recognizing the extraordinary scale of the challenges facing Alaska’s fisheries and working with us to ensure Alaska’s fishermen receive the timely support they need.”
SOUTH CAROLINA: Federal injunction keeps red snapper permit suspended; SC proposes fall season
June 19, 2026 — South Carolina’s planned summer pilot season for red snapper fishing in federal waters remains on hold after a federal court injunction suspended similar permits across the region, state wildlife officials said.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources’ (SCDNR) Exempted Fishing Permit for red snapper remains suspended because of the injunction affecting permits in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The permit would have allowed a 62-day red snapper season in federal waters off South Carolina beginning July 1.
Trump administration to buy back another energy company’s offshore wind leases for 4 more projects
June 18,2026 — The Trump administration said Wednesday it’s buying back another energy company’s U.S. offshore wind leases for four more wind projects, as it seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy in favor of fossil fuels.
The latest deal brings the total amount spent on these agreements to nearly $2.6 billion.
Chicago-based Invenergy has agreed to end its four offshore wind leases that were very early in development in exchange for reimbursements of lease fees totaling $765 million. The company had already canceled the largest of the four in November, Leading Light Wind off New Jersey’s coast. The others are off the coasts of Maine and California. It will invest that money in natural gas and geothermal ventures that can be built more quickly instead.
By buying back leases, the Republican administration is stopping offshore wind farms that President Donald Trump does not support, and redirecting the money to fossil fuel projects that he does. It adopted this strategy after federal courts thwarted Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind development through executive action. Trump has frequently talked about his hatred of wind power and calls turbines ugly.
Trump administration walks back plan to cut ocean observation after legislative effort
June 18, 2026 — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has walked back plans to dismantle a deep-ocean observation system after pushback from members of Congress.
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced recently the administration was planning to dismantle the USD 368 million (EUR 321 million) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The OOI consisted of multiple underwater monitoring arrays, which provide openly accessible data to oceanographers, researchers, educators, and the public and contributed to everything from storm forecasting to fishery health.
Trump Administration to Buy Back Four More Offshore Wind Leases
June 18, 2026 — Continuing its strategy of canceling offshore wind projects by buying back the leases in exchange for other energy investments, the Department of the Interior announced its third agreement. The administration has committed nearly $2.6 billion to canceling offshore wind leases even as the strategy is being challenged in court and by regulators.
Invenergy will voluntarily terminate four offshore wind leases it purchased in the past from the government and will redirect the investments toward other domestic energy sources, said the Department of the Interior. It valued the four leases at $765 million for one lease in the New York Bight for a New Jersey wind farm, two for floating offshore wind farms in Maine, and one off the coast of California.
The largest and most advanced of the projects was Leading Light Wind, which had submitted its offshore wind project bid to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) in August 2023. It called for up to 2.4 GW, which would have made it the largest in the United States. It would have been more than 40 miles off the coast near Atlantic City, New Jersey, and included a battery storage option that would provide 253 MW of advanced energy storage, but it had yet to submit a Construction and Operations Plan proposal to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
NOAA says $123 million coming for six ‘fishery resource disasters’
June 18, 2026 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said a package of fishery disaster relief for West Coast and Alaska fishermen is on the way.
NOAA announced the allocation of $123.6 million in fishery resource disaster funding, appropriated by Congress in the American Relief Act, 2025. The money will go to address fishery resource disasters that occurred in Oregon, California, the Squaxin Island tribe in Washington State, and multiple Alaska fisheries between 2019 and 2023.
“Fishery resource disasters have devastating effects on local communities and our economy,” said Neil Jacobs, NOAA’s administrator. “This disaster funding provides much needed assistance to our fishing industry, and we will work with the affected communities to help them recover.”
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