February 19, 2025 — The longtime Commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources is stepping down.
Governor Mills announced Tuesday that Patrick Keliher will be retiring on March 14.
ALASKA: From Sea to Community, The Evolution of Alaska’s Community Development Quota Program
February 19, 2025 — For almost 50 years, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has governed sustainable fisheries all around the United States. It supports 1.6 million jobs and tens of thousands of small businesses. It also supports one of the most enduring and effective economic opportunity programs in America, the Western Alaska Community Development Quota program, or CDQ.
The Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, as Magnuson-Stevens was originally known, is known globally for creating the “exclusive economic zone,” which gave the United States control of natural resources from 3 miles (the end of state waters) out to 200 miles from its shores. The law evicted foreign fishing fleets from the bountiful fishing grounds of the Bering Sea, reserving it for a small but growing fleet of American fishing vessels. The Act also directs that local stakeholders appointed to regional fishery management councils decide how the fisheries should operate. Their decisions are made within firm statutory guardrails that mandate sustainability, minimize bycatch, and protect fishing communities.
America’s Bering Sea fleet was originally based in, and owned by, Seattle companies. When Congress updated Magnuson-Stevens in 1996, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens added the CDQ program into federal law, setting up a mechanism that would slowly shift ownership of the fleet from Seattle to Alaska. CDQ began at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in 1992, the brainchild of western Alaska advocates who saw that most Bering Sea communities did not have an economic stake in the Bering Sea. The program sets aside ten percent of the fish harvests for a small percentage of the pollock harvest for 65 Bering Sea communities, most of which are majority Alaska Native. The communities are grouped into six regional non-profit entities. These “CDQ groups” harvest the fish on their own vessels or sell the harvest rights to fishing companies, then use the revenues to invest in the Bering Sea industry and fund economic development in one of America’s poorest regions: coastal western Alaska.
OREGON: Dungeness crab haul is down this season for Oregon fleet, but strong prices making up for less volume
February 19, 2025 — Oregon’s commercial Dungeness crab catch is down so far this season but the price fishermen are getting for their catch is buoying the fleet’s spreadsheets.
“The volume is down but the price has been really good so the actual money to the boats is still up there,” said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s state fishery manager Troy Buell.
Last year at this time approximately 17½ million pounds had been landed for a price paid to fishermen of about $63 million.
“This year we’ve got just under 14 million pounds, but the total revenue to the boats is actually better at over $83 million,” Buell said.
The structure of this season’s opening was staggered to allow crab in Oregon’s northern waters to better fill out with meat. The opening was not exactly the same as last year’s staggered opening, but close enough to make a comparison.
The season, which can open as early as Dec. 1, was delayed until Dec. 16 from the California border to Cape Falcon near Manzanita. Cape Falcon north to the Washington border opened Jan. 7.
MASSACHUSETTS: New Videos Highlight New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center and Port
February 19, 2025 — “Catch the Tradition,” a series of promotional videos touting the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center and the fishing industry, are now finished and ready to share with the public.
Overseeing the project was Marketing Specialist Matt Moyer Bell, who joined Townsquare Sunday this week to discuss the videos.
“The Fishing Heritage Center is not just a museum, it’s a community resource that documents an entire culture and community that is the backbone of New Bedford,” Bell said. “It’s a major part of the economy and the people who live here.”
ALASKA: Alaska’s salmon fishery passes MSC audits, marking 25 years of certification
February 18, 2025 — The Alaskan salmon fishery has met all Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard requirements related to its hatcheries after a recent audit, allowing it to continue possessing its certification.
MRAG Americas, an independent assessment body, determined Alaska’s salmon fishery met the MSC’s hatchery management standards, which include comprehensive marking of hatchery-produced salmon to track the origin of fish to certain hatcheries. The tracking is designed to allow fishery managers to assess and regulate fishery contributions and interactions between hatchery salmon and wild salmon.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: USD 3 million donation will expand programming at University of New Hampshire aquaculture education center
February 18, 2025 — The Emily Landecker Foundation, a New Hampshire, U.S.A.-based nonprofit, has donated USD 3 million (EUR 2.86 million) toward ensuring the University of New Hampshire’s (UNH) Center for Sustainable Seafood Systems is able to grow its programming.
“We have deep concerns about climate change, the world we live in, and how this could impact food availability for future generations,” a representative for the foundation said. “We live in New England, so we are keenly aware of the warming of the Gulf of Maine and how it is affecting local fisheries and other sources of food from the ocean.”
ALASKA: NPFMC adjusts proposals to reduce chum salmon bycatch by Alaskan pollock trawlers
February 18, 2025 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has advanced a set of five alternatives for reducing chum salmon bycatch in the U.S. state of Alaska’s pollock fishery, setting up a vote on implementing new protections as soon as December 2025.
Chum salmon populations in Alaska have plummeted in recent years; in the Yukon River, for instance, the fall chum salmon run is 97 percent below its historical average. The low abundance levels have led to fishery closures and bans on subsistence fishing in parts of the state.
ALASKA: How a risky state investment in seafood cost Alaskans millions and left a fishing town in crisis
February 14, 2025 — Last summer, an unsettling quiet cloaked the isolated Southwest Alaska community of King Cove as the town’s economic engine — a sprawling seafood processing plant — sat shuttered.
Bunkhouses, once filled with hundreds of workers during the peak salmon harvest, were vacant. Four diesel generators that had rumbled day and night were stilled. The plant docks, once lined with boats and circled by fish-scavenging gulls, were empty.
The closure resulted from the financial implosion of the plant’s owner, Peter Pan Seafood. Some local fishing boat captains directed their ire at company leaders who accepted their seafood, then failed to pay them.
They dwelled far less on a surprising, largely silent, powerhouse investor in the plant: the state of Alaska.
The trustees of Alaska’s Permanent Fund, an $80 billion savings account whose earnings provide residents with annual dividends and help pay for government services, decided to invest more money in companies with ties to Alaska. More than $29 million went to Peter Pan, according to figures provided by the Permanent Fund’s current board chair.
The deal ended disastrously last year with the company’s liquidation, hundreds of unpaid creditors and a likely total loss for Alaskans on their investment.
A ProPublica investigation, in collaboration with the Anchorage Daily News and Northern Journal, revealed that the Permanent Fund’s leadership and its hired management firm ignored or overlooked warning signs leading up to the deal.
Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News
ALASKA: Final federal decision on chum salmon bycatch slated for December
February 14, 2025 — In the wake of several days of lengthy testimony on chum salmon bycatch, a final decision for the issue is scheduled for the December North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Anchorage.
In the interim, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is slated to publish its draft environmental impact statement on the matter in the Federal Register in August, allowing for 60 days of public comment to follow.
By the conclusion of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Anchorage on Feb. 11, the body had amended some alternatives and was sending the analysis to NMFS for publication of the draft environmental impact statement.
Those changes included lowering a considered bycatch cap in some salmon corridors to 50,000 chum salmon, shortening the time frame by which they’ll take action, and also broadening the overall range of alternatives. The council did not indicate support of any specific alternative.
NEW YORK: New York approves power line for Equinor offshore wind farm
February 14, 2025 — New York’s utility regulator on Thursday granted a unit of Norwegian energy firm Equinor permission to build and operate transmission facilities for the company’s Empire Wind 1 offshore wind farm under construction off the state coast.
The transmission line for the project runs about 17.5 miles (28.2 kilometers) from the boundary of New York State waters to a point of interconnection in Brooklyn, the New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC) said in a release.
Read the full article at Reuters
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