Saving Seafood

The Wild Fish Conservancy’s never-ending lawsuits

December 3, 2025 — The environmental group that sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2020 in an effort to shut down the Southeast Alaska troll fishery for salmon took home a $1.6 million reimbursement for its costs, despite finally losing its case.

According to the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) website, its sole mission is “the protection and recovery of the Northwest’s wild fish.” Sounds like a great idea, and it would seem that the WFC’s mission and that of commercial fishermen ought to align.

But in 2020, the organization sued the NMFS and sought to close the Southeast Alaska fishery, claiming that it was necessary to protect chinook salmon and the Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW). The years-long case swung back and forth. In 2023, a U.S. District Court ruled in the WFC’s favor, threatening the 2024 season, but a stay imposed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed fishermen to work. On August 16, 2024, the court reversed the district court’s decision because it went too far.

But because the WFC won the earlier case, it sought compensation of $2.3 million for attorney fees and other related costs. The Judge gave them close to $1.7 million. “This appears to be their business model, how they make their money,” says Jeff Farvour, who trolls for salmon from his 40-foot boat, the Apollo. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Terry Haines/Kodiak Daily Mirror: Report cards for sablefish and cod stocks

December 3, 2025 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in-person starting today at the Egan Center in Anchorage. The council will meet through Dec. 9.

Among the documents they will peruse are “report cards” for Alaska’s sablefish stock, and Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod stock. These report cards are based on data through 2024.

Sablefish numbers continue to be buoyed by a strong class from 2019. Here are some other factors that could determine the fate of sablefish statewide:

Surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) and southeastern Bering Sea (SEBS) remain below average, with no recent heatwave events in the GOA.  Unlike other species the historically warm water temperatures were beneficial to baby sablefish. Cooler conditions probably mean relatively slower larval sablefish growth.

Scientists actually keep track of the size of baby sablefish observed in seabird bill loads. While their size increased in 2023, it remained below the historical average, while growth was average in 2024.

The zooplankton community size was above average in the eastern GOA but below average in the western GOA in 2023, implying variable feeding conditions for larval and young-of-the-year (YOY) sablefish.

Read the full article at Alaskafish.news

ALASKA: Alaska seafood harvesting jobs down for fifth straight year

December 1, 2025 — Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, facing lower prices for its harvest and rising costs, saw a loss of 443 harvesting jobs in 2024—a fifth straight year of employment loss, state labor officials said.

That 7.6% job decline was similar to the previous year’s 7.8% job loss, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development noted in the November issue of Alaska Economic Trends.

Seafood harvesting in Alaska has lost over a third of its total jobs in the past decade, with fishing employment down every year of the last 10 except for 2019. That includes the summer peak, which has fallen about 30%, from 24,600 jobs in July 2014 to 17,400 in July 2024.

While most other Alaska industries bounced back after big job declines during the Covid-19 pandemic, seafood harvesting continues to struggle as the industry faces unpredictable runs, the volatility of climate change, seafood processing plant closures and sales, and disrupted fisheries.

International trade is also shifting, with China now purchasing more fish from Vietnam than from the United States.

Labor Department economist Joshua Warren said that how tariffs will affect these relationships isn’t clear, but they will likely put additional pressure on prices as domestic harvesters compete with countries that have more favorable trade deals.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska’s commercial red king crab fishery sees ‘historically high’ value

December 1, 2025 — The commercial red king crab fishery that opened in Southeast Alaska on Nov. 1 is generating more money than it has in the past two decades combined.

Red king crab is a low-volume, high-value fishery. It last opened in Southeast Alaska in 2017. The catch that year was over 120,000 pounds, worth $1.2 million at the docks.

Eight years later, the value has skyrocketed to roughly $5 million.

“It’s definitely at a historic high,” said Adam Messmer, a regional shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Weighing 6.5 to 7.5 pounds each and selling for $26 to $30 a pound, the red king crab are worth about $200 a piece.

Messmer said expectations going into the fishery were high, but the starting price was “above everybody’s wildest dreams.”

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: Study probes environmental drivers of salmon bycatch in Alaska pollock fishery

December 1, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries scientists are examining how ocean conditions influence Chinook and chum salmon bycatch in the eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery, one of the world’s largest seafood harvests. The new study, led by researchers at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and partner institutions, analyzes more than a decade of observer data to identify environmental factors linked to salmon encounters.

Alaska’s pollock fleet lands more than 2 billion pounds annually, but unintentional salmon catch remains a longstanding management concern, particularly for western Alaska Chinook and chum stocks that have declined sharply in recent years. These salmon are important to regional communities and vulnerable to bycatch because their migration routes overlap with pollock fishing grounds. NOAA and the industry have implemented multiple avoidance measures, but managers say a clearer understanding of what drives bycatch is needed.

“This is an issue that’s the subject of ongoing discussions at North Pacific Fishery Management Council meetings,” said lead author and fisheries biologist Lukas DeFilippo. “There’s limited information available on how environmental factors affect bycatch, which could potentially be useful for informing ongoing scientific and policy discussions.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

US Chamber of Commerce enters Pebble Mine legal fight, backs challenge to EPA veto

November 26, 2025 — The US Chamber of Commerce has stepped into the long-running legal fight over the Pebble Mine project, filing an amicus brief on Tuesday in federal court that signals a major escalation in one of Alaska’s most contentious development battles.

The Chamber, the country’s largest business advocacy organization, submitted its motion to US District Judge Sharon Gleason, asking the court to accept its friend-of-the-court filing in support of Northern Dynasty Minerals, the Canadian parent company behind Pebble.

The move gives Pebble a powerful new ally as the company continues to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2023 veto of the mine under the Clean Water Act. That veto, which halted the project before it could advance toward construction, cited the potential for catastrophic impacts to Bristol Bay’s world-leading sockeye salmon fishery. Pebble’s supporters argue the EPA far exceeded its authority and imposed a precedent-setting blockade on domestic mining projects, while opponents, including environmental groups, maintain the watershed is too valuable and too vulnerable to risk.

Read the full article at The Alaska Story

ALASKA: NPFMC poised to roll over halibut, crab bycatch limits for 2026/27 in December

November 26, 2025 — Each December the North Pacific Fishery Management Council sets the Total Allowable Catches (TACs) for all groundfish species in federal waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska for two years. Those waters – from three to 200 miles out – provide over 60% of Alaska’s total fishery landings.

This massive range covers approximately 900,000 square miles and includes over 140 fish and crab species through six different Fishery Management Plans (FMPs).

The value of the combined groundfish fisheries tops $2 billion annually at first wholesale (the value after primary processing). Of that, nearly 75% leaves the state of Alaska and goes primarily to Seattle.

The North Pacific Council also sets the rates of bycatch that go along with all those groundfish catches.

Bering Sea trawl bycatch tops the allowed takes of snow crab and Tanner crab for fishermen

Crab bycatch numbers are indicated as individual animals by fishery managers, but to make things more confusing, crab catches by fishermen are listed in poundage.

For the 2025/2026 season, crabbers are allocated 2.68 million pounds of red king crab. That equals about 382,857 crabs based on an average weight of 7 pounds each. The allowable trawl bycatch for red king crab is 97,000 animals.

For Snow crab (opilio), the fishermen’s catch of 9.3 million pounds adds up to 6.2 million individual crabs weighing 1.5 pounds on average.

The allowable trawl bycatch for Snow crab is 12,850,000 animals.

For bairdi Tanner crab, the crabber’s pots can haul up a total of 11.25 million pounds – 10.12 million pounds from the Western district and 1.13 million pounds from the Eastern district. That equals 3.75 million crabs, based on an average weight of three pounds per crab.

The allowable trawl bycatch for bairdi Tanners is 3.95 million animals.

By far, most of the crab and halibut bycatch is taken by the Seattle-based Amendment 80 fleet of nearly 20 huge factory trawlers that drag the bottom of the Bering Sea for flounders and other groundfish.

Read the full article at Alaskafish.news

ALASKA: Strong 2025 sockeye run roughly doubles value of local commercial fisheries

November 25, 2025 — A new report from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shows the value of Cook Inlet’s commercial sockeye salmon fishery almost doubled this year compared to last year. Fishermen caught more than $40 million worth of salmon across all species in both Upper and Lower Cook Inlet, according to preliminary harvest data released earlier this month.

Colton Lipka says there’s a simple reason for the spike. He’s the management biologist for Upper Cook Inlet’s commercial fisheries.

“The most meaningful reason for the large jump in the value is the large jump in harvest,” he said.

That jump is mostly thanks to sockeye. Commercial fishermen caught more than $36 million worth of sockeye in Upper Cook Inlet this year. That’s up from less than $20 million last year, and from a little over $14 million the year before that.

Read the full article at KDLL

ALASKA: Federal actions spark new optimism for Alaska’s fishing industry

November 24, 2025 — Fisheries in Alaska are responsible for about 60% of the seafood in the United States, but they have faced significant challenges in recent years, including declining revenues, prices, and margins, according to speakers on “The Future of North Pacific Fisheries” panel at the 2025 Maritime Industry Economic Forecast Breakfast, held Friday during the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle.

“My agency produced a snapshot report last year, looking at economic impacts across Alaska fisheries and confirming declining revenue and prices and increasing costs with declining margins,” said John Kurland, Regional Administrator for NOAA’s Alaska Regional Office. “Revenues dropped by about $1.8 billion in 2022 and ’23. It hasn’t gotten a whole lot better since.”

All is not doom and gloom, however. The panelists struck a more upbeat tone when speaking about the future. For many across the sector, President Trump’s Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness executive order — issued in April — has given reason for optimism.

NOAA is working with other parts of the federal government and non-government groups to meet the goals of the executive order: “Things like considering regulatory changes to simplify and streamline regulations where we can increase flexibility where possible, looking at advanced technologies to improve data collection, to try to introduce cost efficiencies and hopefully make it more timely to get data into the management process, and updating national seafood trade strategy to try to address global trade dynamics and level of playing field,” Kurland said.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Off Alaska’s coast, halibut abundance and size pose challenges to fishermen and orcas

November 24, 2025 — Over the past decade, it’s become more difficult for commercial halibut fishermen off Alaska’s coasts to catch enough to meet their quotas, as the flat whitefish have become less abundant and smaller.

That’s according to a recent series of stories from fisheries reporter Hal Bernton, published in the Anchorage Daily News, Seattle Times and Northern Journal.

Bernton says the potential reasons for the decline include a warmer ocean leading to less food for young halibut, as well as a flawed model used for managing the fishery.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Hal Bernton: While the resource was in a cyclical decline, the models that the International Pacific Halibut Commission were using to basically estimate how many fish are out there and what’s the future, they were significantly flawed. And there was one scientist who was very outspoken about flaws in the model, and it wasn’t well received, and he ended up getting fired. Then they developed new models that really bore out some of the criticism that he made. So there’s a mix of environmental conditions, and then some would say, also, there have been some fishing pressures as well that have contributed to the decline.

Casey Grove: So for commercial halibut fishing, the folks that you talked to, they’re doing longlining, so they’ve got, you know, hundreds of baited hooks out. But then in some of the same areas, you’ve got folks that are bottom trawlers that are catching fish with nets. And you talked to a captain of one of those boats, who essentially said one of the things that keeps him up at night is catching too many halibut. I wonder if you could explain how that works.

Read the full transcript at Alaska Public Media