December 8, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries has announced two new slow zones for right whales, including Cape Cod Bay. The restrictions are in place through December 20th after the whales were discovered last Friday. The other slow zone is east of Ocean City, Maryland, using a buoy that was operated partly by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. […] The post NOAA Fisheries implements slow zone after right whale detection in Cape Cod Bay appeared first on CapeCod.com.
MAINE: “A devastating situation.” Reward offered in major theft from Maine oyster farm
December 5, 2025 — Maine Operation Game Thief is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction in a major theft from an oyster farm in Falmouth.
Maine Marine Patrol says, on Nov. 22, Michael Scafuro of Portland went to check his aquaculture site near The Brothers Islands in Casco Bay when he discovered 14 aquaculture cages and 40,000 oysters, many of which were ready for sale, were missing. The cages and oysters are worth nearly $20,000.
Marine Patrol searched the area at the time to determine if the gear could have broken free of the anchors that hold it in place, but none of the gear was found. Marine Patrol says the rope, anchors and buoys that hold the gear in place were still on the site, but the cages in which the oysters are held during cultivation and the oysters in them were missing.
MASSACHUSETTS: Seventeen months on, Vineyard Wind blade break investigation isn’t done
December 4, 2025 — Sixty-two towers. Sixty-two nacelles. One-hundred eighty-six blades.
Those are the pieces that comprise Vineyard Wind, an 800-megawatt offshore wind project nearing completion after more than two years of construction.
By The Light’s accounting, the project has two towers and two nacelles left to ship out from the Port of New Bedford. That leaves the blades — an estimated 33 of which, as of last month, have yet to top some turbines, and an unknown number that may still need to be removed and replaced.
As batches of blades have traveled across the seas, to and from New Bedford, France, and Nova Scotia, and been installed on turbines, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has continued to investigate what caused one of the blades to fail in July 2024.
In January 2025, the Biden administration ordered Vineyard Wind to remove all blades manufactured at a factory in Gaspé, Quebec, where the broken blade was built. BSEE gave Vineyard Wind permission to finish construction using blades from a different factory in Cherbourg, France.
ALASKA: Contamination safeguards of transboundary mining questioned
December 4, 2025 — Reports of mine tailings dams leaching toxicants into salmon-rich transboundary waterways flowing into Southeast Alaska are raising concerns of fishermen, tribes, First Nations, and communities on both sides of the Alaska-British Columbia border.
According to Salmon Beyond Borders and the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) the administration of Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has put the risk of transboundary mining contamination of shared rivers at greater risk a decade after the Alaska and government of British Columbia signed a Memorandum of Understanding about Canadian mining on these transboundary rivers flowing into Alaska.
“For eight years the Dunleavy administration has allowed ongoing and new pollution from B.C. transboundary mines to go unaddressed and for B.C. to skirt accountability for commitments outlined in state-provincial agreements,” said Breanna Walker, director of Salmon Beyond Borders, in a statement issued on Nov. 25.
“Alaska’s fisheries are increasingly at risk from British Columbia’s transboundary mines,” said Linda Behnken, executive director of ALFA. “We rely on both state and federal governments to negotiate meaningful protection for Alaska waterways and fisheries. In the absence of meaningful action our fish, fisheries and fishing communities are vulnerable.”
State of Alaska officials say they are in fact very engaged with British Columbia through the Transboundary Bilateral Working Group. Sam Dapcevich, special assistant to the DEC commissioner, said in an email on Nov. 26 that “Alaska also continues to advocate for cleanup of the Tulsequah Chief mine. DEC is fully engaged and working with our B.C. counterparts on activity awareness and status of projects,” he said.
ALASKA: Terry Haines/Kodiak Daily Mirror: Report cards for sablefish and cod stocks
December 3, 2025 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in-person starting today at the Egan Center in Anchorage. The council will meet through Dec. 9.
Among the documents they will peruse are “report cards” for Alaska’s sablefish stock, and Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod stock. These report cards are based on data through 2024.
Sablefish numbers continue to be buoyed by a strong class from 2019. Here are some other factors that could determine the fate of sablefish statewide:
Surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) and southeastern Bering Sea (SEBS) remain below average, with no recent heatwave events in the GOA. Unlike other species the historically warm water temperatures were beneficial to baby sablefish. Cooler conditions probably mean relatively slower larval sablefish growth.
Scientists actually keep track of the size of baby sablefish observed in seabird bill loads. While their size increased in 2023, it remained below the historical average, while growth was average in 2024.
The zooplankton community size was above average in the eastern GOA but below average in the western GOA in 2023, implying variable feeding conditions for larval and young-of-the-year (YOY) sablefish.
ALASKA: Pebble Mine, halted by EPA order, gets support from national development groups
December 2, 2025 — Developers’ efforts to overturn the cancellation of a vast gold and copper mine planned for southwest Alaska are getting a boost from national mining and pro-business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
On Nov. 24 and Nov. 25, the Chamber and the National Mining Association filed separate friend-of-the-court briefs in the lawsuit brought by the developers of the proposed Pebble Mine against the Environmental Protection Agency, which vetoed the mine.
Neither group has intervened in the case against the EPA, but the briefs represent the groups’ support for the proposed mine and offer legal arguments that Judge Sharon Gleason could consider as she debates whether to move the project forward.
In 2023, the EPA invoked a rarely used “veto” clause of the Clean Water Act to say that there was no way that the proposed Pebble Mine could be developed without significant harm to the environment. The large mineral deposit is located at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, the most abundant sockeye salmon fishery in the world.
The administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, which supports the project, and the proposed mine’s developers, filed separate lawsuits in federal court to overturn the rejection, as did two Native corporations that work as contractors for the developers. Those cases have since been combined.
ALASKA: Alaska seafood harvesting jobs down for fifth straight year
December 1, 2025 — Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, facing lower prices for its harvest and rising costs, saw a loss of 443 harvesting jobs in 2024—a fifth straight year of employment loss, state labor officials said.
That 7.6% job decline was similar to the previous year’s 7.8% job loss, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development noted in the November issue of Alaska Economic Trends.
Seafood harvesting in Alaska has lost over a third of its total jobs in the past decade, with fishing employment down every year of the last 10 except for 2019. That includes the summer peak, which has fallen about 30%, from 24,600 jobs in July 2014 to 17,400 in July 2024.
While most other Alaska industries bounced back after big job declines during the Covid-19 pandemic, seafood harvesting continues to struggle as the industry faces unpredictable runs, the volatility of climate change, seafood processing plant closures and sales, and disrupted fisheries.
International trade is also shifting, with China now purchasing more fish from Vietnam than from the United States.
Labor Department economist Joshua Warren said that how tariffs will affect these relationships isn’t clear, but they will likely put additional pressure on prices as domestic harvesters compete with countries that have more favorable trade deals.
ALASKA: Southeast Alaska’s commercial red king crab fishery sees ‘historically high’ value
December 1, 2025 — The commercial red king crab fishery that opened in Southeast Alaska on Nov. 1 is generating more money than it has in the past two decades combined.
Red king crab is a low-volume, high-value fishery. It last opened in Southeast Alaska in 2017. The catch that year was over 120,000 pounds, worth $1.2 million at the docks.
Eight years later, the value has skyrocketed to roughly $5 million.
“It’s definitely at a historic high,” said Adam Messmer, a regional shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Weighing 6.5 to 7.5 pounds each and selling for $26 to $30 a pound, the red king crab are worth about $200 a piece.
Messmer said expectations going into the fishery were high, but the starting price was “above everybody’s wildest dreams.”
NORTH CAROLINA: Claws are out over proposed changes to NC blue crab fishery
December 1, 2025 — North Carolina’s blue crabs could soon be the latest species in the state to face harvest cutbacks and other limiting restrictions over concerns about the declining health of the state’s most valuable commercial fishery.
But crabbers are going to make sure the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission noisily hears their concerns before any additional steps to limit seasons and daily catch hauls are implemented.
Still, officials with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries have said sampling programs and landing data continue to show worrisome declining trends. Agency biologist Robert Corbett Jr., who also is the department’s co-lead on blue crabs, told the commission at its Aug. 20 meeting that neighboring states are showing similar negative long-term directions with their blue crab fisheries.
ALASKA: Study probes environmental drivers of salmon bycatch in Alaska pollock fishery
December 1, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries scientists are examining how ocean conditions influence Chinook and chum salmon bycatch in the eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery, one of the world’s largest seafood harvests. The new study, led by researchers at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and partner institutions, analyzes more than a decade of observer data to identify environmental factors linked to salmon encounters.
Alaska’s pollock fleet lands more than 2 billion pounds annually, but unintentional salmon catch remains a longstanding management concern, particularly for western Alaska Chinook and chum stocks that have declined sharply in recent years. These salmon are important to regional communities and vulnerable to bycatch because their migration routes overlap with pollock fishing grounds. NOAA and the industry have implemented multiple avoidance measures, but managers say a clearer understanding of what drives bycatch is needed.
“This is an issue that’s the subject of ongoing discussions at North Pacific Fishery Management Council meetings,” said lead author and fisheries biologist Lukas DeFilippo. “There’s limited information available on how environmental factors affect bycatch, which could potentially be useful for informing ongoing scientific and policy discussions.”
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