September 10, 2025 — The Puget Sound region is anticipating a substantial increase in pink salmon returns for 2025, with forecasts predicting a total of 7.76 million fish. This figure represents a 70% rise from the 10-year cycle average and is expected to be the third-largest return on record. However, some populations, like the Chinook salmon stocks, are expected to limit some salmon fisheries in the upcoming season.
RHODE ISLAND: Rhode Island Calamari Festival Right Around The Corner
September 10, 2025 — The eighth annual Rhode Island Calamari Festival is less than two weeks away.
“This festival has now grown to be one of Narragansett’s biggest events, serving more than 1,500 lbs. of calamari while drawing in thousands of people from across Southern New England,” the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce posted on its website.
VIRGINIA: VA Wetlands and Living Shorelines Worth $90 Million in Economic Value
September 9, 2025 — A push in Virginia to invest in shorelines and marshes may be paying off. Natural wetlands and man-made living shorelines around Virginia’s Middle Peninsula generate just under $90 million of economic value each year, according to a new study led by William & Mary’s Batten School & VIMS.
The Middle Peninsula (Gloucester, Mathews, & Middlesex counties) has been a Habitat Focus Area of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chesapeake Bay Office (NCBO) since 2022. That Office funded the study, which combines ecological data, spatial modeling, economic valuation, and surveys to assess the current and predicted benefits of marsh ecosystems. Researchers used numbers from the study to develop a new online tool for coastal communities to estimate the economic benefits of marsh and living shoreline projects. It’s known as SHORE-BET (Shoreline Benefit Estimation Tool).
“This study looks at wetlands from a number of perspectives and puts research-informed values on the benefits they provide,” said Donna Bilkovic, professor and assistant director of the Center for Coastal Resources Management at the Batten School & VIMS. “These data serve as the foundation for SHORE-BET, allowing local planners and individual landowners to better understand the potential environmental and economic benefits associated with living shoreline projects and marsh protection and restoration.”
VIRGINIA: Two Hampton Roads wind energy grants were canceled. But $20M was already spent.
September 8, 2025 — A Norfolk maritime facility tied to the region’s nascent offshore wind industry plans to shift part of its operational plans after President Donald Trump’s administration killed a $39 million grant.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week his agency was withdrawing from or terminating $679 million in funding for 12 projects related to offshore wind energy.
The canceled funding includes a $39 million grant for Fairwinds Landing, a more-than $500 million maritime facility in Norfolk’s Lamberts Point connected to shipbuilding, ship repair and offshore wind.
Fairwinds Landing leaders are now asking the Department of Transportation’s U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, to reconsider the cuts , said Mike Hopkins, the project’s managing director.
LOUISIANA: Fishermen in Southwest Louisiana Say LNG Terminals Are to Blame for Shrimp Harvest Decline
September 8, 2025 — Ray Mallett started fishing near the mouth of the Calcasieu River more than half a century ago as part of the “mosquito fleet,” a ragtag group of kids that plied the surrounding rivers and bayous in small motorboats in search of crabs.
A Gulf Coast fisherman like his father before him, Mallett harvested shrimp for decades from an estuary in Southwest Louisiana that was once the seafood capital of America.
Now, he can hardly catch enough shrimp to pay for fuel.
“Each year we’re getting less and less,” Mallett said, standing at the helm of his boat, Cajun Memories. The name is a nod to his roots, and as one of the last remaining shrimp boats in Cameron’s port, a once-thriving fishery.
NEW JERSEY: Longtime Jersey Shore mayor, commercial scalloping mogul dies at 71
September 5, 2025 — Kirk Larson, a fishing enthusiast who was mayor of Barnegat Light for nearly three decades, died suddenly over Labor Day weekend, according to an obituary and several public officials.
Larson, who died Saturday, was 71. A cause of death was not immediately known.
The mayor was likely best known for co-owning the commercial fishing docks at the Viking Village shops, a staple of Long Beach Island known for its seafood market. Using a fleet of boats, he ran a scallop-catching enterprise out of the docks, which supplied seafood for restaurants, wholesalers, fish markets and supermarkets across the area.
“Kirk Larson was a good friend and it is still hard to believe that he passed away,” Assemblyman Greg Myhre (R-Dist.9) said in a statement. “I got to know him well over the past seven years and my respect for him increased each time we spoke. He was a great conversationalist, always positive and was a tireless advocate for his town, the seafaring community, and the people of Ocean County.”
NORTH CAROLINA: Fisheries ax pound net trip limits for commercial operations
September 5, 2025 — The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has removed the pound net trip limits established previously for this year’s commercial fishing season in estuarine waters.
The division announced the commercial fishing season Aug. 26, and explained at the time that “all pound net management areas will open for the harvest of flounder with initial trip limits.”
The limits were 500 pounds for the northern area, which is north of the Pamlico Sound, 1,000 pounds for the central area that includes the Pamlico Sound and its tributaries, and 500 pounds for the southern management area that is from Core Sound to the South Carolina line.
Officials revised the pound net limits and sent out the updated information Friday, explaining that “all pound net management areas will open for the harvest of flounder without initial trip limits.
” Opening dates for the three areas did not change. The northern area is to open Monday, Sept. 15, and the central and southern management areas are to open Oct. 1.
ALASKA: Diesel spill near Kodiak-area hatchery disrupts salmon fishery
September 4, 2025 — State officials say a grounded fishing vessel leaking diesel from a beach near Kodiak has prompted a commercial fishing closure as well as precautions at a salmon hatchery.
The Sea Ern ran hard aground in Izhut Bay off Afognak Island with a 12-foot gash in its bow, damaging two fuel tanks, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
The U.S. Coast Guard said watchstanders received a distress call on VHF radio at approximately 6:30 a.m. Monday reporting the vessel hit a rock and was taking on water. There were three people aboard.
The good Samaritan vessel MS Kennedy responded to the distress call and recovered all three people from the vessel, the Coast Guard said. No injuries were reported.
RHODE ISLAND: R.I. Gov. McKee asks to meet with Trump over Revolution Wind project still in limbo
September 4, 2025 — After a dozen days in limbo, state and federal officials keep ramping up the pressure on the Trump administration to let the Revolution Wind project resume. The offshore wind project already under construction south of Rhode Island was put on hold on Aug. 22, leaving workers in the lurch and risking critical energy reliability and climate change mandates.
In a Wednesday letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Gov. Dan McKee outlined the consequences of the stop-work order, while asking for a meeting with President Donald Trump.
“The stop-work order undermines efforts to expand our energy supply, lower costs for families and businesses, and strengthen regional reliability,” McKee wrote to Burgum. “This action puts hundreds of well-paid blue-collar jobs at risk by halting a project that is just steps away from powering more than 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.”
More than 1,000 union workers have spent much of the last two years building the 65-turbine project, 45 of which have been installed, as well as a pair of substations that will connect the power supply to Rhode Island and Connecticut. The 704 megawatts of nameplate capacity was set to be delivered by mid-2026, and already baked into the long-term plans for meeting Rhode Island’s decarbonization mandates under the state’s 2021 Act on Climate law. It is also critical to regional electrical grid reliability, especially in extreme weather events where fuel supply might be limited.
VIRGINIA: Trump admin cancels $39M meant for Norfolk’s Fairwinds Landing because of wind energy association
September 4, 2025 — Norfolk’s Economic Development Authority will ask the Trump administration to reconsider its decision to cancel a grant meant to improve Fairwinds Landing.
The body made the decision during their monthly meeting Wednesday, five days after the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the $39 million in Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) funding would be withdrawn, due to the sites association with the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project.
The funding, first awarded to the authority in 2023 under the Biden administration, was to “assist in transforming the marine terminal at Fairwinds Landing into offshore wind logistics facility,”
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