Saving Seafood

State and Local

NEW JERSEY: Frustrated, skeptical Jersey Shore fishermen say ‘no’ to striped bass closures

September 19, 2025 — Displaying frustration and skepticism with the management of striped bass, and now faced with potential seasonal closures, one by one recreational fishermen who went to the Stafford firehouse Tuesday, for the public hearing on Draft Addendum III, pleaded to keep the “status quo” rather than go forward with a strategy to reduce striped bass mortality by 12%.

It was a nearly unanimous room, but there were two people who voiced their opinon in support of the reduction.

About 100 party and charter boat captains, tackle shop owners and anglers shuffled into the firehouse and filled out the rows of metal fold-out chairs for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s presentation of the addendum’s options to meet what several recreational industry members in the room said is an “unobtainable” rebuilding goal.

Read the full article at Asbury Park Press

CALIFORNIA: California isn’t backing down on offshore wind power despite Trump cancellation

September 18, 2025 — California’s ambitious plan to generate clean electricity from offshore wind suffered a considerable blow recently when the Trump administration canceled nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for the state’s largest project. But industry insiders, experts and officials told The Times they aren’t slowing the pursuit of this up-and-coming technology.

The Golden State last year approved a landmark plan for developing 25 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2045. Five ocean leases have already been granted to energy companies off the coast of Humboldt and Morro Bay, with the potential to produce up to 10 gigawatts of electricity.

The plan eventually could see 1,600 turbines as tall as the Eiffel Tower in federal waters 20 to 50 miles offshore, producing enough electricity for 25 million homes. It is a climate solution and key component of the state’s goal of reaching 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.

Floating offshore wind is relatively new compared with fixed offshore wind, which involves attaching turbines directly to the sea floor. Most offshore wind around the world so far is fixed, but California has been exploring floating turbines because the Pacific Ocean is so deep. The floating technology has been successfully deployed in Norway, France, Portugal and China.

Federal officials last year said California’s offshore wind efforts would help combat climate change, lower consumer costs and create jobs. But the Trump administration has an aversion to climate efforts and to wind power in particular: On his first day in office, the president issued a memorandum halting offshore wind leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf and ordered officials to review all existing leases to look for legal grounds for termination.

Read the full article at LA Times

VIRGINIA: Ocean Harvesters welcome new menhaden seiner

September 18, 2025 — Omega Shipyard Inc. of Moss Point, Miss., recently delivered a new, state-of-the-art menhaden seiner, F/V Tangier Sound, to Ocean Harvesters in Reedville, Va.

The 165’x40’x12’ steel hull vessel will be fished in Chesapeake Bay and in the Mid-Atlantic region. The vessel’s hull was originally used as an offshore oil supply vessel (OSV) and was about to be scrapped when it was purchased by Ocean Harvesters for $250,000. Omega Shipyard Inc. has done a $9 million conversion on the vessel.

Ocean Harvesters CEO Monty Diehl said OSV hulls make good menhaden steamer platforms. For many decades the industry used scrapped steel hull World War II freighter vessels for “fish steamer” conversions. The use of the term goes back to the days when large purse seine fishing boats were powered by steam engines.

Even though steam engines have long ago been replaced with diesel engines, the 150-foot plus diesel powered vessels on Chesapeake Bay are today still referred to as fish steamers. Before steam engines, sail powered schooners, bugeyes and pungies were used in the bay’s menhaden purse seine fishery that goes back to the late 1860s.

Omega Shipyard Inc.’s previous OSV hull conversions that have come to the Chesapeake have all been powered by rebuilt and reused Caterpillar or Detroit Diesel engines pulled out of old fishing boats. Tangier Sound has two new Cummins KTA38 model, 12 cylinder, 38-liter diesel engines, rated at 1350 h.p. that will push the vessel 13 knots, burning 55 gals. of fuel an hour.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

LOUISIANA: 20 Years After Rita, Southwest Louisiana’s Fishing Industry Fights to Survive—Can Aquaculture Bring It Back?

September 18, 2025 — It’s been a decade since Hurricane Rita ripped through southwest Louisiana, and recovery has been a long, difficult process for many who have lived in the coastal area.

Farmland and pastures were inundated with saltwater from the storm surge. Numerous homes were flooded or washed away, bringing a drastic change for thousands of people who had lived along the coast for decades.

The town of Cameron was hardest hit. Its seafood industry was decimated. Docks were destroyed, and the only ice house was knocked out of commission.

Kevin Savoie, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant agent in Cameron Parish, said a new facility for commercial fishing being built along the waterfront includes an ice house, processing facility, and public dock. The $4 million project is being funded with a Community Development Block Grant, and the Cameron Parish Police Jury has partnered with a private firm to run the facility, he said.

The ice house is a significant step toward revitalizing the local seafood industry, Savoie said. “That, along with the need for some public docking facility, has really held things back.”

Cameron previously drew larger offshore shrimp and fin-fishing boats. “We do not see them in port at Cameron anymore,” he said.

Cameron has shrunk in other ways. “We lost about 80 percent of our population,” Savoie said. A town that counted 2,200 people in the 2000 census is down to about 400.

Residents moved north in the parish to Grand Lake, with others moving to nearby parishes. “Our population in the parish went from below 10,000 to 6,400 or 6,300, with most of them north of the Intracoastal Waterway,” he said.

Some residents who relocated still maintain cattle herds along the coast, but cattle prices are too high for most to be able to afford restocking, Savoie said.

Read the full article at RFD-TV

ALASKA: Brief tuna bounty in Southeast Alaska spurs excitement about new fishing opportunity

September 17, 2025 — In Alaska, a state famous for abundant salmon and huge, cold-water-loving crab, another type of fish is making a splash: tuna.

Incursion of warm waters into Southeast Alaska coastal areas off Sitka and Baranof Island created a brief tuna jackpot earlier this month for sport fishers.

One of the first of those anglers was Troy Tydingco, who happens to be the Sitka sportfish area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

He took a day off from work when conditions were just right to search for tuna, a type of fish suited to more southern latitudes: beautiful weather, with calm waters and water temperatures that reach 60 degrees.

About 30 miles offshore, the search was successful. Tydingco and his six companions caught 44 albacore tuna in all. Other fishers followed.

“I think this is probably the first time sport anglers have really successfully targeted them and harvested them out of Sitka,” he said.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

NORTH CAROLINA: Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition stresses lawmaker education as top priority

September 17, 2025 — Educating state and county lawmakers on ways to best serve North Carolina’s commercial fishing industry will be among the top priorities of the newly-formed NC Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition (CCFC).

The group is made up of county leaders from the state’s coastal regions who have joined together to address critical issues surrounding the state’s fishing industry and advocate for their interests in Raleigh.

The coalition was formed in response to recent legislative efforts to ban shrimp trawling and other perceived threats. In June, a late amendment to House Bill 442 sought to prohibit shrimp trawling along inshore waters and within a half mile of the coast. It was abandoned after hundreds of commercial shrimpers and their supporters protested in Raleigh in opposition to the bill.

The CCFC held its first meeting on Aug. 5 at the Crystal Coast Civic Center and met for the second time on September 16 at the same location.

A total of 12 county representatives were on hand for Tuesday’s meeting. The coalition prioritized the key issues impacting fisheries that they hope to address, including education, water quality decline, fishing/crabbing limits, trip limits, predation management, consumer marketing and increasing the transparency of data from the Marine Fisheries Commission.

The coalition agreed to appoint members to serve on sub-committees that will focus on each of the priority topics.

Read the full article at NEWS TIMES

NORTH CAROLINA: North Carolina coastal leaders unite to tackle fishing industry challenges

September 17, 2025 — Coastal county leaders from North Carolina convened at the Morehead City Civic Center for the second meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition. The coalition aims to create a united front to address issues impacting the state’s commercial fishing industry.

During the meeting, leaders set priorities for the coalition, identifying education, water quality, and predator management as the top three concerns. Chris Chadwick, who was sworn in as vice chairman of the coalition, highlighted the challenges facing the industry.

Read the full article at WCTI

ALASKA: Mapping Alaska’s Wild Kelp Beds with Farmers

September 17, 2025 — Alaska’s coastline holds vast, untapped potential for seaweed aquaculture—but knowing exactly where wild kelp grows is critical for sustainable expansion. A new mapping project, led by NOAA Fisheries in collaboration with Alaska Sea Grant and local farmers, is working to locate these wild kelp beds. This will help:

  • Source healthy kelp for farming
  • Assist farmers in meeting state permitting requirements
  • Support NOAA’s Aquaculture Opportunity Areas identification process

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

ALASKA: Pacific tuna fishery opens in Eastern Gulf of Alaska

September 17, 2025 — A new Pacific tuna fishery has opened for commercial harvesters in the eastern Gulf of Alaska, with the required commissioner’s permits to be available from the date issued through Dec. 31.

“The decision to create the commissioner’s permit was based on requests from the commercial fleet to target Pacific tuna, given the large presence of tuna in our waters outside of Sitka,” said Rhea Ehresmann, leader for the Region 1 groundfish project for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G).

Ehresmann said sport harvesters have told ADF&G there is a large body of blue warm water around 60 degrees Fahrenheit located over 10 miles off Cape Edgecumbe outside of Sitka.

“It is very exciting; we are hoping to see some tuna harvested in the Sitka area,” she said on Monday, Sept. 25. “It sounds like the tuna are a bit farther offshore, around 10-plus miles from Cape Edgecumbe around the 1,000-fathom line, though the Pacific tuna are swimming and caught much closer to the surface.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Drone photos suggest a 2014 marine heat wave is still stunting orca growth, reproduction in Alaska

September 16, 2025 — It’s well documented by now that the marine heatwave that hit the Pacific Ocean in 2014 had devastating effects on Alaska’s marine ecosystem and commercial fisheries.

Now, scientists are uncovering long-term impacts on Alaskan killer whales specifically – a harbinger as marine heat waves become more frequent and severe with climate change.

“We’ve learned that females that were growing during those heat wave years grew to smaller sizes,” said John Durban, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium in Boston who has been studying killer whales in the Gulf of Alaska for two decades.

“If you’re smaller as a whale, it means you don’t have as much fasting endurance, you can’t store as much blubber,” Durban added. “So if you go through lean times, you’re less likely to bring a successful pregnancy to term.”

Durban has been partnering with the Alaska-based nonprofit North Gulf Oceanic Society to monitor several hundred resident, salmon-eating killer whales in the Gulf of Alaska. He flies drones over the water, which capture images of the whales from more than 100 feet in the air.

Those images allow researchers to measure how individual whales are developing over time.

The North Gulf Oceanic Society has been monitoring killer whales in the Gulf for more than four decades. Durban said that work became particularly important in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which correlated with an “unprecedented” number of whale deaths among two pods that were exposed to the spill, according to NOAA.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media