Saving Seafood

ALASKA: As waters around Alaska warm, algal toxins are turning up in new places in the food web

March 27, 2026 — Over the past two summers, a pair of remote and treeless volcanic islands in the eastern Bering Sea broadcast signals of climate change danger in the marine ecosystem that feeds Alaska residents and supports much of the state’s economy.

Tribal employees monitoring St. Paul Island’s beaches came across 10 dead but seemingly well-fed northern fur seals in August of 2024, their bodies lying amid piles of dead fish and birds.

Testing revealed that the seals had been killed by an algal toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning. It was the first ever conclusive case of marine mammals killed by saxitoxin, the algal toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The people living on St. Paul, numbering about 400, most of them Unangax, are highly dependent on the marine environment for their food. They are aware of the algal toxins that pose risks of paralytic shellfish poisoning in faraway Southeast Alaska. But seal deaths from algal toxin poisoning on their own island came as a big surprise to local people, said Aaron Lestenkof, who is part of the tribe’s Indigenous Sentinels Network.

“It never occurred to us that it may happen to our marine mammals here,” Lestenkof said. “I guess it was just a matter of time.”

The St. Paul die-off was not a one-time incident. In August of 2025, tribal residents found 21 dead fur seals on a beach at St. George Island, a sister island of St. Paul. Along with the seals were two dead fin whales, a dead sea lion and several dead seabirds.

Read the full article at

ALASKA: Warmer waters boost appetite of invasive pike for salmon

March 27, 2026 — Rising temperatures in the waters of Southcentral Alaska’s Deshka River have boosted the appetites of invasive northern pike, to the peril of Chinook and coho salmon and other fish species.

A study led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers, published in February in the journal Biological Invasions, notes that pike of every age class are eating more fish as water temperatures rise, including a 63 percent rise among year-old pike.

Benjamin Rich, who led the study while pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, said researchers expect there will be significant warming in the future, and the amount of fish pike consume will increase with it.

The big thing to watch will be the cumulative impacts of climate warming, including hatchery issues and endangered species, said UAF fisheries professor Peter Westley, who worked with Rich and Erik Schoen, of UAF’s International Arctic Research Center, on the study.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Board of Fish rejects proposals to reduce hatchery pink and chum production

March 27, 2026 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries last weekend voted down three proposals to limit hatchery production of pink and chum salmon. Those hatcheries are mostly in Southeast Alaska and Prince William Sound. They’re run by private nonprofits, and the state manages their permits.

There are currently 11 hatcheries permitted to take 1.39 billion pink salmon eggs and 15 hatcheries permitted to take 939 million chum salmon eggs.

The Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee sought a 25% reduction in egg production per hatchery permit. That’s a proposal that they’ve recommended before.

Board of Fish member Mike Wood of Talkeetna discussed the pros and cons.

“By cutting 25% of hatchery production in areas like Prince William Sound or Southeast, is the squeeze worth the juice with the impacts that it would have on these small boat fishermen, on an industry that we really need to rely on in this state?” he asked.

Read the full article at KCAW

ALASKA: Board of Fisheries overhauls commercial drift fleet management plan

March 26, 2026 — Upper Cook Inlet’s commercial driftnet fishing fleet has a new rulebook for the salmon fishing season that starts in July. That’s after the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which oversees state-managed waters, significantly altered the fleet’s season parameters during its meeting in Anchorage last week. Some Kenai Peninsula fishermen are unhappy with the changes.

The changes were spurred by a proposal from Andy Couch, a fishing guide in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, although the version approved by the board was ultimately a dramatic rewrite of the submitted language. Couch told commissioners the Upper Cook Inlet’s drift fleet is preventing coho salmon from getting to the Deshka and Little Susitna Rivers. That’s where Couch guides.

“Northern Cook Inlet coho salmon escapements have declined with increased use of the central district drift gill net fleet to harvest large returns of Kenai and Kasilof river sockeye during the past three years,” he said.

The state’s management plan for Cook Inlet’s central district drift gillnet fishery is outlined in Alaska Administrative Code. Cook Inlet is carved into chunks of fishing grounds that may be opened or closed by the Department of Fish and Game.

Board members weren’t scheduled to hear proposals impacting Cook Inlet fisheries during its 2026 meeting. That’s because the board meets on three-year cycles, and Cook Inlet issues aren’t scheduled to be taken up until 2027. But the board agreed to take up the proposal as a supplemental issue.

The new rules let the fleet potentially fish eight more hours per week, but restrict the fleet’s fishing grounds.

Read the full article at KDLL 

Habitat protections for Alaska ringed and bearded seals reinstated by appeals court

March 26, 2026 — A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated protections for Arctic Alaska seals across a coastal and marine region stretching from the Central Bering Sea to the Beaufort Sea off the state’s northern coast.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal regulators acted properly in 2022 when they designated nearly 160 million acres as critical habitat for ringed seals and bearded seals. Both species are listed as threatened because of their dependence on Arctic sea ice. Designated critical habitat is required under the Endangered Species Act. It protects listed populations in the places they are most concentrated.

The appeals court ruling reverses a 2024 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason that struck down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s critical habitat designation as overly broad. And Wednesday’s ruling rejects arguments made by the state of Alaska that the critical habitat designated by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service was too vast to justify the negative impacts to oil development and other activities.

NMFS acted properly and in accordance with the law when it designated critical habitat for the seals, making the decisions after weighing impacts to activities like oil development, the ruling said.

The appeals court ruling said that the nearly 160 million acres of designated critical habitat area is large, but size is relative.

“To put that number into perspective, Alaska and its surrounding waters cover nearly half a billion acres—so even a small subset of the state may seem large in the abstract,” it said.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

Halibut quota hits record low as fishermen compete for shrinking catch

March 26, 2026 — Pacific halibut users – commercial, sport, subsistence and personal use – will compete for a total harvest of just 29.33 million pounds this year, the lowest yield determined by the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) in its 102-year-old history.

The new total is 1.3 percent below the 2025 coast-wide quota.

It breaks out at 24.27 million pounds for the U.S. portion, the same as last year, which includes Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California. A catch total of 5.06 million pounds is allocated for British Columbia.

The 2026 Pacific halibut fishery will close Dec. 7.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Kodiak kelp farmers form a co-op, plan to sell a million pounds

March 25, 2026 — Five kelp farmers from around Kodiak Island have started the Kodiak Ocean Growers Co-op. It’s a member owned and operated organization that hopes to benefit all of the archipelago’s kelp farmers in the growing, local industry.

Kelp farmer Tollef Monson, who operates Alaska Sea Greens with his wife Adelia on the west side of Kodiak Island in Uganik Bay, said the idea for the co-op started two years ago. He said the hope is that the farmers will collectively be able to communicate with buyers about a price that they can survive on.

“So each farmer didn’t have to go to each buyer and try and negotiate,” Monson said. “The co-op can be kind of a place of negotiation but also for aggregation, for the total amount of kelp that a buyer wants.”

Monson said the intent is for each participating farm to sell its kelp to the cooperative, which then sells to the buyers. They’re working with at least two main buyers this year, Macro Oceans and Cascadia Seaweed in British Columbia.

Read the full article at KMXT

ALASKA: Aleutians East Borough files formal ethics complaint for a conflict-of-interest vote in suspending Alaskan conservation program

March 25, 2025 — The Aleutians East Borough in Alaska filed a formal ethics complaint with Alaska’s Attorney General regarding a vote taken that approved the dismantling of an adaptive conservation management program.

The complaint alleged that a council member who voted should have recused themselves from the February Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting due to a conflict of interest.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA Conducts First Comprehensive Aerial Survey of Ice Seals in the Arctic

March 24, 2026 — During spring 2025, scientists conducted the most extensive aerial survey of ice-associated seals to date. The survey took place between April 4 and June 10, 2025, off the coasts of western and northern Alaska. The goal was to determine the abundance and regional distribution of four species in U.S. waters: bearded, ringed, spotted, and ribbon seals.

This survey used multispectral camera systems enabled with artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and document seals hauled out on the spring sea ice. We will use data from these sightings to estimate species abundance and distribution—critical information used to monitor and manage wildlife populations.

Spring is the Best Season for Surveys

Bearded, ringed, spotted, and ribbon seals are known collectively as ice seals because they use seasonal sea ice as a platform to rest and raise their young. They also haul out on the ice while they undergo an annual molt cycle. Molting is an energy-intensive process of shedding the top layer of skin to reveal a new fur coat. All ages of ice seals undergo this process each spring. This provides a short window when many seals are out of the water and available to be counted from the air.

The research is part of the Alaska Ice Seal Research Plan, which outlines key research priorities for these animals. The plan is developed each year in collaboration with the Alaska Native Ice Seal Committee’s Co-management Working Group. Seals are vital resources for northern coastal Alaska Native communities and are key species in Arctic marine ecosystems. Abundance estimates and distribution maps are crucial for sound decision-making about:

  • Co-management of subsistence use of ice seals
  • Conservation
  • Permitting of activities in the Arctic that could affect these species or their habitat

Researchers included scientists from the NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

ALASKA: New proposals would protect Alaska waters from bottom trawling

March 23, 2026 — Three proposals before the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which took place March 17-21 in Anchorage, would require that bycatch mitigation tools recognized as best practice be used in groundfish harvesting within state waters.

These proposals are not intended to prohibit pelagic trawling or shut down a fishery, but to keep trawl gear off the ocean bottom, where it is not legally allowed, according to the Alaska Healthy Habitat Alliance (AHHA).

Read the full article at the National Fisherman