April 9, 2026 — On the docks of Port Orford, a small fishing town on the southern coast of the U.S. state of Oregon, Aaron Longton runs a modest seafood business out of a garage converted into a processing room.
On a recent morning, he lifted a redbanded rockfish from a sink full of ice water and passed it to Brian Morrissey, who works beside a cutting table turning the fish into tidy fillets. That day’s catch included hundreds of kilograms of rockfish (Sebastes babcocki) and lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus). Two decades ago, such abundance would have been difficult to imagine, reports contributor Jules Struck for Mongabay.
The West Coast groundfish fishery, which spans more than 90 species living along the Pacific seabed from Washington state to California, once teetered near collapse. By 2000, federal authorities declared the industry a disaster. Stocks had been depleted by years of heavy fishing. Regulators responded with severe restrictions. Large sections of ocean were closed to trawling, quotas were slashed, and Congress funded a buyout that removed dozens of vessels from the fleet. Many fishers left the industry.