Saving Seafood

State and Local

DELAWARE: Offshore wind bill heads to Delaware Senate floor after contentious hearing

June 6, 2025 — Democratic lawmakers faced more than an hour of angry public comments on June 2 from residents who largely slammed their proposal to retroactively strip Sussex County Council of its ability to deny a permit for an offshore wind farm – one of the most controversial energy projects in recent memory.

But in the end, the members of the Senate Environment, Energy and Transportation Committee nonetheless advanced the bill to be considered by the full Senate.

Opponents of the proposal say it’s an example of government overreach, while Democrats and environmental groups supporting the bill say it’s necessary to address Delaware’s energy needs.

The bill is slated for a vote in the State Senate next week, after legislators return to session following the state’s budget markup hearings. Should it pass there, the Delaware House of Representatives would then consider the bill.

Read the full article at Spotlight Delaware

ALASKA: New bill seeks to vastly expand Bristol Bay mining protections

June 6, 2025 — A new bill introduced in the closing hours of Alaska’s legislative session seeks to expand protection for the Bristol Bay region, home to a prolific wild salmon fishery that produces over $2.2 billion in economic output and supports over 15,000 Alaskan jobs. The bill, introduced by Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon (I- Dillingham) and Representative Andy Josephson (D- Anchorage), would ban metallic sulfide mining, also known as hard-rock mining, throughout the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve, where oil and gas development is already banned without approval of the Alaska legislature.

The ban would greatly expand the area currently protected by the EPA under the Clean Water Act, which is centered around the proposed Pebble Mine. The new reserve-wide protections would encompass the entirety of the Bristol Bay watershed, where over 20 mining claims remain active in the wake of the battle over the Pebble Deposit. Additionally, if passed by the state legislature, the bill would create multi-layered protection — based on both state and federal regulations — for the region.

The Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve was first established in 1972 under the leadership of then state senator and later Alaska Governor Jay Hammond, recognizing the need to protect the sensitive region and its immensely valuable wild salmon fishery from the dangers of fossil fuel extraction and development.

According to Daniel Schindler, Ph.D., Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, “The iconic fisheries in Bristol Bay ultimately depend on the vast and productive watersheds that provide the spawning and nursery habitats for salmon. Industrial scale efforts to extract metals from the sulfide-rich deposits found throughout Bristol Bay watersheds pose substantial and unavoidable risks to salmon fisheries because it is clear that these activities will permanently alter stream flows, and will contaminate surface and ground water sources. Mining of these sulfide-rich deposits will also require perpetual retention and maintenance of waste materials that will generate contaminants directly toxic to fish for centuries. These activities are both economically expensive and are simply not compatible with strategies to sustain commercial, sport, and subsistence fisheries in the future.”

As a result of the bill being introduced in the waning hours of the Alaskan legislature’s first of two legislative sessions, the bill will automatically be up for consideration when the legislature next convenes in January of 2026.

Read the full article at The Hatch

NEW JERSEY: NOAA Says Longterm Environmental Impact of New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Projects Not Certain

June 5, 2025 — A recent federal symposium has highlighted significant scientific gaps in the ability to assess the environmental impacts of offshore wind development, raising questions about how New Jersey’s rapidly advancing offshore wind projects could affect local marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

At the “State of the Science” symposium on offshore wind last year, officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) presented what they described as serious “constraints” in efforts to build ecosystem models for offshore wind development (OWD).

These findings, disclosed in court filings this week, underscore concerns surrounding current and future offshore wind construction along the New Jersey coast.

Read the full article at Shore News Network

ALASKA: Stronger federal support for AK fisheries

June 5, 2025 — Deputy executive director Jamie O’Connor of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC) and fifth-generation Bristol Bay salmon fisherman testifies before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries.

The Subcommittee heard testimony from five people during an oversight hearing titled “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”

Representing AMCC and the Fishing Communities Coalition (FCC)—a national alliance of more than 1,000 small-boat fishermen coast-to-coast—O’Connor emphasized the urgent need for robust funding and staffing of NOAA, calling them the “scientific and regulatory guardrails” that enable the seafood sector to function effectively, fairly, and sustainably.

“Without a strong and functioning NOAA, we’re not just losing data—we’re losing stability, credibility, and the ability for coastal communities to thrive,” O’Connor said during her testimony. “This is not red tape—it’s our food supply, our economic health, and the future of wild seafood in America.”

FCC members across the country echoed O’Connor’s call for action, demonstrating alignment throughout America’s coastlines around core challenges and values.

“The testimony from our colleague at AMCC detailed many of the same challenges we face on the other side of the country, here on Cape Cod,” said Aubrey Church, fisheries policy director for the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. “Commercial fishermen are the economic backbone of our coastal communities, part of a centuries-old tradition of going to sea to not only feed their families, but the nation.”

In addition to highlighting the risks of an underfunded NOAA, O’Connor’s testimony pointed to the outsized returns to be found through meaningful investment in waterfront infrastructure.

“We urgently need investments in our working waterfronts to safeguard access to the water,” Church said, “access that is not only vital to sustaining our jobs, but also fundamental to preserving coastal ways of life.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska seafood industry ‘uniquely vulnerable’ to tariff impacts, trade groups say

June 5, 2025 — Alaska’s seafood industry could see an outsized impact from international tariffs, according to experts.

In April, President Donald Trump announced a major tariff hike on China, escalating up to 145%, and China retaliated with similar rates. Though both governments struck a deal in May delaying any increases by at least 90 days, they haven’t been canceled, and tariffs have stayed elevated since his last presidency. That makes Alaska seafood less competitive in China, one of the largest markets for it internationally.

Two trade groups representing some of Alaska’s largest seafood processors — the Pacific Seafood Processors Association and the At-Sea Processors Association — sent a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative March 11 urging caution on new tariffs worldwide.

“(Alaska is) heavily dependent on fair access to export markets, and also uniquely vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs that our trading partners may seek to impose in the event of heightened trade tensions,” they wrote. “Accordingly, care must be taken to remedy these issues in a manner that does not increase the harm to U.S. seafood producers.”

The letter points to an “existential and global threat” to Alaska’s seafood industry in recent years due to unfair trade practices by Russia, which has been overproducing and flooding world markets for years, especially for pollock. The U.S. currently has broad trade sanctions on Russia.

Read the full article at Alaska Journal of Commerce

OREGON: Oregon’s fishing industry faces demand challenges at home and trade barriers abroad

June 4, 2025 — Newport’s Local Ocean restaurant is the kind of place where you might have lunch next to the fisherman who caught it.

That’s according to Laura Anderson, co-founder of the more than 20-year-old restaurant.

“Creating market opportunity for fishers and showcasing local species were really what drove the founding of the restaurant,” Anderson said over a tuna wrap with fries on a recent Friday afternoon.

The tuna in her wrap comes directly from Oregon fishers, Anderson said. Local Ocean has built its business around buying as much fish as it can directly from Newport’s fleet of commercial fishing boats.

That makes Local Ocean an anomaly. The majority of seafood sold at restaurants on the Oregon coast doesn’t come from Oregon, according to a 2023 report commissioned by the Oregon Coast Visitors Association. Meanwhile, most fish from Oregon’s commercial fleet are exported to foreign markets.

Although restaurants like Local Ocean are working to convince diners that locally-sourced fish is delicious and easy to incorporate into most meals, on the whole, Americans don’t choose fish as their daily protein source. By contrast, fish is the number one protein source in most Asian countries, where it is regularly included in daily meals. The lack of fish consumption here makes access to foreign markets especially important for fishers.

That was the challenging market environment facing Oregon’s fishing industry before President Donald Trump made two major moves during the first few months of his second term: cuts to the federal workforce and tariffs that are causing foreign buyers to retaliate against U.S. sellers.

On Wednesday, the International Trade Court ruled the bulk of Trump’s tariffs illegal after Oregon and 11 other states sued the administration over the import taxes. On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals froze that decision as it considers the administration’s appeal. Many economists say the back and forth on tariffs have already done lasting damage to U.S. industries.

“Fishing and having a life in the fishing industry is chaotic,” Heather Mann, executive director of Newport-based Midwater Trawlers Cooperative, said. “There’s ups and downs for all variety of reasons from season to season, year to year. So a lot of people will say, ‘Oh my gosh, the tariffs. The tariffs, how is that impacting you?’ And my response right now is, in terms of seafood and exporting seafood, we’re uncertain. We don’t know.”

Federal officials key to facilitating Oregon fishing industry

The fishing industry, like many others, relies on global trade. Oregon exported nearly $50 million worth of seafood to global markets last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Division accessed via wisertrade.org.

In the same period of time, $102 million worth of imported seafood flowed through Oregon. Some of it ended up on plates in coastal restaurants, some of it went to Oregon grocery stores, and a lot of it was ultimately shipped to other states for consumption.

Mann’s organization is a nonprofit trade group representing more than 30 vessels that fish on the Pacific Ocean. She’s been at the helm for just over a dozen years. Mann said the current back-and-forth on tariffs creates market uncertainty.

However, people who make a living pulling fish out of the ocean have contended with numerous challenges in recent years, from tariffs and other global trade disruptions to wars, the pandemic and natural disasters.

In the immediate term, Mann said fishers need three things to do their job: independent scientific surveys that measure the health of a fishery; stock assessments that take that information to help determine where, when and how much it’s ok to fish of a certain species; and trained workers to complete those tasks on an ongoing basis.

“Without those three things,” Mann said, “exporting fish doesn’t matter because we won’t be able to fish.”

Read the full article at KLCC

MAINE: Commercial Tuna Fishermen: Participate in Proposed Offshore Wind Survery

June 4, 2025 — The Maine Dept. of Marine Resources and the University of Maine Pelagic Fisheries Lab run by Dr. Walt Golet are working on a study to quantify the potential overlap between the commercial Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery and proposed offshore wind areas in the Gulf of Maine.

At this time, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has finalized 5 lease areas in the Gulf of Maine for offshore wind. While many of the US East Coast offshore wind projects are paused, under review, or in some cases postponed indefinitely, the future of offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine remains unknown at this time. This actually creates an opportunity to establish important baseline data in support of the US bluefin tuna fishery should development ever continue and things like mitigation measures be needed.

Read thd full article at On The Water

MAINE: You’re Going to See a Lot More American Eel on Menus — Thanks to This Maine Aquafarm

June 4, 2025 — Each spring, fishermen set nets in Maine’s rivers to fish for the state’s most valuable catch. No, not the iconic lobster, but tiny glass eels that fetch wholesale prices topping $2,000 per pound. Those baby eels, each two to three inches long, aren’t destined for dinner yet. Instead, they’re bought by aquaculture farms in Asia and grown to maturity in tanks; each pound of glass eels yields about 1,250 pounds of adult eels. Those adult eels are then sold back to the American market.

To Sara Rademaker, a marine educator with a degree in fisheries and aquaculture, the system didn’t make any sense: “Why don’t we just grow our fish in our own community?” she asked. In 2014, she launched American Unagi, North America’s first large-scale, land-based eel aquafarm. It started as a small, home-based operation but quickly grew. “We had 7,000 [glass eels], and then we jumped to 50,000 — and then 500,000.”

Read the full article at Food & Wine

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford seafood processing workforce fearful of ICE raids, deportation after May arrests

June 3, 2025 — New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A., is one of the busiest seafood-processing hubs in the nation, but the workforce there – largely comprising migrants from Central America – is living in constant fear of deportation, a longtime seafood processing worker who has since left the industry told SeafoodSource.

The former worker, who spoke to SeafoodSource on the condition of anonymity, said that ever since two undocumented Guatemalan men without criminal records, who were workers at New Bedford-based seafood-processing company Oceans Fleet, were taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on 12 May, workers in the community are wondering if they will be the next ones to be arrested.

Read the full article at Massachusetts

CALIFORNIA: Juvenile salmon released at the Pillar Point Harbor

June 2, 2025 — For the 14th year, the Coastside Fishing Club is releasing salmon smolt into the Pillar Point Harbor in efforts to boost the state’s beleaguered salmon population.

“We’ve seriously made a difference in the past,” Tom Mattusch, San Mateo County Harbor District commissioner and board member of the Coastside Fishing Club, said. “For a long time, our progress was one of the most successful. Now it’s being copied in other areas.”

Commercial salmon season in the state will be closed for a third year in a row in 2025, largely due to grim forecasts of Chinook salmon stock.

The idea behind the volunteer release efforts is both to increase the general salmon population and encourage salmon to return to the harbor once they have matured, ostensibly creating a new fishery at Pillar Point, Mattusch said.

Read the full article at The Daily Journal