Saving Seafood

Arctic Warming Is Turning Alaska’s Rivers Red With Toxic Runoff

December 17, 2025 — Record-setting temperatures and rainfall in the Arctic over the past year sped up the melting of permafrost and washed toxic minerals into more than 200 rivers across northern Alaska, threatening vital salmon runs, according to a report card issued by federal scientists.

The report, compiled by dozens of academic and government scientists and coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, documented rapid environmental changes from Norway’s Svalbard Island to the Greenland ice sheet and the tundra of northern Canada and Alaska.

Between October 2024 and September 2025, the period from when the ground begins to freeze until the end of summer, surface air temperatures were the warmest on record dating back 125 years, the report found.

“The Arctic region has a powerful influence on Earth’s ecosystem as a whole,” said Steve Thur, NOAA’s assistant administrator for research and acting chief scientist.

This year’s 153-page Arctic report card is coming out despite a shift at the agency, including a focus on commercial aspects of the ocean, such as deep-sea mining. In April, the Trump administration proposed eliminating NOAA’s research arm, a move that would hobble early warning systems for natural disasters, science education and the study of the Arctic. The Trump administration fired 1,000 NOAA employees earlier this year, but has since tried to rehire 450 of them, mostly in its National Weather Service branch.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Ecosystem shifts, glacial flooding and ‘rusting rivers’ among Alaska impacts in Arctic report

December 17, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, which documents the way rising temperatures, diminished ice, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers and vegetation shifts are transforming the region and affecting its people. The agency has released the report for 20 years as a way to track changes in the Arctic.

“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years that comprise the last decade marking the 10 warmest years on record,” Steve Thur, NOAA’s acting administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research and the agency’s acting chief scientist, said at a news conference Tuesday.

The report card is a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 13 countries, with numerous coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was officially released at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans, where Thur and other officials held the news conference.

The report is the first under the second Trump administration, at a time when the federal government’s commitment to documenting Arctic climate change has diminished: The president has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and federal departments are cancelling climate change-related research and projects, as well as scrubbing climate information from public view.

Under directives from the Trump administration, NOAA no longer provides information that the National Snow and Ice Data Center once used to monitor sea ice and snow cover, for example. The Colorado-based center now relies on satellite information from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for its sea ice reports, and it has reduced its analysis.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

NOAA Seeks Comment on Bering Sea Chum Salmon Bycatch Proposals

December 17, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on a new draft environmental impact statement for four potential strategies to reduce chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. Comments are due Jan. 5.

The document responds to a request from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to evaluate management options ahead of its February meeting in Anchorage.

Chum salmon, including fish from Western Alaska river systems, are unintentionally caught in the Bering Sea pollock trawl fleet.

Scientists and fishery managers attribute declines in Western Alaska chum to a mix of stressors, including changing marine conditions, competition with large numbers of hatchery-origin fish from Asia, commercial harvest, and bycatch in other fisheries.

For many Alaska Native communities, the downturn has caused repeated subsistence fishing restrictions, threatening food security and creating economic, social, and cultural strain.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Oceana appeals court ruling over Gulf of Alaska environment

December 15, 2025 — Oceana served notice on Monday, Dec. 8, of its intent to appeal a federal district court dismissal of its lawsuit contending that federal fishery managers failed to protect corals, sponges, and other seafloor habitats in the Gulf of Alaska.

The notice of appeal was filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The international advocacy entity for ocean conservation, represented by Earthjustice, charged in its lawsuit filed in August of 2024 in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Alaska, that the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council have consistently failed to minimize adverse effects to essential fish habitats from bottom trawling.  Bottom trawling involves huge, weighted nets as long as a mile in length being dragged up to 15 miles along the seafloor, damaging and often destroying everything in their path.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

USDA awards nearly USD 14 million in catfish, pollock, and salmon contracts

December 15, 2025 —  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded USD 13,694,519 (EUR 11,666,316) in contracts for catfish, pollock, and salmon products for use in federal domestic food programs.

Sitka, Alaska, U.S.A.-based Silver Bay Seafoods was the biggest winner of the announcement, securing roughly half of the funding by value. The company was awarded USD 7,077,272 (EUR 6,028,959) to provide more than 88,000 cases of canned pink salmon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Without completed 2025 reports, federal fishery managers use last year’s data to set Alaska harvests

December 12, 2025 — Lacking the usual amount of data to guide them, federal fishery managers relied on last year’s reports to set the coming year’s harvests for the nation’s top-volume commercial fish species: Alaska pollock.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the panel that sets harvest levels and other rules for fisheries conducted in federal waters off Alaska, voted on Sunday to keep 2026 pollock catch limits in the Bering Sea at about the same level as this year’s limits while paring back the pollock catch limit for the Gulf of Alaska.

Pollock, one of key species in the North Pacific Ocean, is widely sold as fish patties and fillets, fish sticks, imitation crab meat and other products.

The council, which sets the coming year’s groundfish harvest limits each December, typically bases those decisions on detailed annual Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation reports, known as SAFE reports. But this year, the prolonged federal government shutdown prevented National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists and their partners from completing SAFE reports for the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

Instead, the council used the 2024 SAFE reports, supplemented with some newer data about harvests completed this year and some preliminary information about ecosystem conditions. The newer information did not reveal any conservation concerns that would justify harvest reductions, the council determined.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

Federal shutdown disrupts quota-setting for pollock

December 12, 2025 — Last week, members of the body that oversees federal fisheries off Alaska’s coast recommended keeping next year’s catch limits for the sprawling Bering Sea pollock fishery about the same as this year.

Managing the nation’s largest commercial fishery is never simple, but North Pacific Fishery Management Council member Anne Vanderhoeven said during the meeting that this year had unprecedented challenges.

“Because of the lapse in federal funding and the subsequent government shutdown, updated stock assessments are not available,” she said.

Without those assessments, the council had to rely on older data and partial updates.

Read the full article at KUCB

ALASKA: Alaska Natives’ fight for fishing rights finds an ally in Trump team

December 12, 2025 — The Trump administration is now siding with Alaskan Natives and opposing the state in a long-running fight about subsistence fishing rights and the high-stakes meaning of the phrase “public lands.”

In a legal brief filed Tuesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to disregard the state of Alaska’s appeal of a lower court’s decision upholding an expansive view of the Native fishing claims. Sauer’s brief cited the power of precedent, noting previous rejections of efforts to limit the subsistence fishing rights granted under a 1980 federal law.

“Given the length of time this interpretation has been in effect, and Congress’s continuing authority to modify the current framework if it chooses to do so, there is no sound reason for the court to revisit the status quo at this juncture,” the solicitor general’s brief stated.

Read the full article at E&E News

NPFMC cuts Gulf of Alaska pollock quotas by 25 percent, keeps Bering Sea quotas mostly steady

December 10, 2025 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has slashed pollock quotas in the Gulf of Alaska by more than 25 percent for 2026 but has kept much larger quotas in the Bering Sea nearly the same.

During a council meeting held 4 to 9 December in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A., the body recommended cutting pollock quota from this year’s total allowable catch (TAC) of 186,245 metric tons (MT) to 139,498 MT. However, quotas in the Bering Sea will stay nearly the same as 2025’s TAC at just under 1.4 million MT.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US Senate passes bill renewing ocean cleanup legislation

December 10, 2025 — The U.S. Senate has passed legislation reauthorizing marine debris cleanup programs originally passed in the 2020 Save Our Seas 2.0 Act for another five years.

“Alaska has more coastline than the Lower 48 states combined, which means our state feels a disproportionate impact of the global marine debris crisis,” U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan said in a release. “These programs, last authorized by our Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, have helped our coastal communities clean up the debris that washes up onto our vast shoreline, provided access to clean drinking water, and supported the health and livelihoods of Alaskans, including our fishermen.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource