Saving Seafood

Research reports capture climate change impacts on halibut

October 29, 2025 — Two recent research reports focused on halibut spatial dynamics, habitat occupation, and spawning dynamics suggest that new management considerations of commercial stocks may be warranted.

The first document, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences this past spring, focuses on identifying halibut spawning dynamics, including locating spawning grounds, and identifying the conditions occupied and the timing of occupation on these grounds, notes Austin Flanigan, a fisheries master student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and principal author of both papers.

Researchers attached pop-up satellite telemetry tags to large female halibut in the Northern Bering Sea, with time series data and tag reporting locations being used to infer spawning behavior and to identify occupied spawning habitat conditions, location, and timing

The research team found that these halibut occupied spawning habitats later and farther north than previously described. Their spawning habitat was occupied from January to May and reached as far north as the Russian continental shelf. They also observed that 42 percent of mature halibut never occupied presumed spawning habitat, suggesting the presence of skip spawning behavior. Such findings, they said, suggest that Pacific halibut exhibit unique spawning dynamics in the Northern Bering Sea, which may result in reduced reproductive potential within the northern population component.

Flanigan said that understanding reproductive output would require fecundity (number of eggs produced) data, as if skip spawning Pacific halibut have the same fecundity as those that spawn annually, then they would produce fewer offspring.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska Bering Sea snow crab fishery kicks off second season back with doubled catch limit

October 27, 2025 — Alaska’s commercial Bering Sea snow crab fishery kicked off its second season of the year with doubled catch limits – a positive sign for harvesters after the fishery was closed for multiple years due to a mortality event.

The Bering Sea snow crab stock plummeted suddenly in 2021, with researchers later placing much of the blame on a marine heatwave and unfavorable ocean conditions. Regulators ended up closing the fishery for multiple years to allow the population to recover, and in 2024, they determined that the stock had improved enough to allow a limited harvest. The Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife (ADF&G) approved a 4.7-million-pound harvest for the 2024-25 season.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Study shows impact Alaska pollock fishery has on economy

October 27, 2025 — There are few fish that can challenge the mighty salmon’s necessity to Alaska, but if one fish could, it might be the Alaska pollock.

Alaska’s pollock fishery is in U.S. water in the eastern Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska primarily.

Now, a new pair of studies is shining a light on how important the fish is to the state.

In terms of economic output, the findings point toward the industry impacting around 6,000 jobs for the Last Frontier, Ron Rogness, Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers director of industry relations, partnerships and fishery analysis, explained.

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Stormy seas

October 24, 2025 — After 3 weeks crisscrossing the frigid Bering Sea, much of it spent wrangling crabs scooped from the sea floor, Erin Fedewa faced a final challenge: getting nearly 200 live animals to a lab 3000 kilometers away in less than 24 hours.

“This is always a little bit risky,” said Fedewa, a fisheries biologist from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as she stood on the deck of the Northwest Explorer, a 49-meter trawler converted for a summer research trip, while the ship was moored at Nome’s port.

She lifted the lid on a waist-high blue plastic box and peered inside. There, immersed in 900 liters of seawater, lay her charges—dozens of what appeared to be enormous spiders, their leg spans the size of hub caps. Chunks of sea ice bobbed beside these snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio), stirred by a pump to keep the animals bathed in the coldest water possible.

For Fedewa, success would mean the difference between months of productive research and de facto crab stew. She learned this the hard way in 2022, when the ship on which she was working docked in Nome and scientists filled the crab tanks with water siphoned directly from Norton Sound, a shallow, warmer part of the Bering Sea. “They just died,” she said.

That small fiasco is a microcosm of the recent fate of snow crabs in much of the Bering Sea. An unprecedented underwater heat wave there in 2018 and ’19 set off a chain reaction that led to the disappearance of an estimated 47 billion crabs, one of the largest marine die-offs ever documented. Suddenly, a $150 million fishery mythologized in the Deadliest Catch reality TV show found itself with no catch at all. State regulators for the first time banned Bering Sea snow crab fishing in 2023 and ’24, and the U.S. government declared a federal fishery disaster. The fishery reopened this year. But crabbing boats were only allowed to haul in a tiny fraction of what they had caught previously. The collapse “has had massive impacts,” says Scott Goodman, a fisheries biologist and executive director of the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation, which is funded by the crab industry.

Read the full article at Science.org

ALASKA: UAF/ADF&G collaborate on king salmon smolt project

October 23, 2025 — A new study of king salmon smolt aims to track their trail from fresh water to the ocean to better understand the troubles facing this prized Alaska fishery.

The project, which began this past summer, is a collaboration between the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (CFOS) and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G). It is funded by a $4 million federal earmark through NOAA to research juvenile king salmon.

Resources for studying king salmon have been largely focused on adult fish. This one will concentrate on those in the smolt stage, a relatively understudied period of development.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

ALASKA: Alaska fishing community updates through the shutdown

October 22, 2025 — When the federal government shut down on October 1, the impacts stretched far beyond Washington, D.C., reaching all the way to the working waterfronts and fishing communities of Alaska. According to the Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC), the shutdown has disrupted scientific operations, delayed critical stock assessments, and created new uncertainties for fishermen, processors, and coastal communities that rely on timely federal action.

In anticipation of the shutdown, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council opted to hold its October meeting entirely online from September 29 through October 9. The agenda was reshuffled to prioritize access to federal scientists while they were still available, but AMCC noted that several agenda items, including updates on Essential Fish Habitat, risk being dropped as key staff were furloughed. That limited engagement could postpone progress on pressing issues such as Bering Sea crab and bycatch management tools.

Another risk that AMCC noted was that NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center warned that a prolonged shutdown lasting more than 15 business days could jeopardize timely stock assessments. These assessments feed directly into the annual catch limit decision, creating challenges for small boat fleets that rely on predictable quotas to plan for the upcoming season. With much of NOAA’s research staff furloughed, AMCC reported that most research activities have paused, although fisheries management, seafood inspections, and law enforcement operations continue at a reduced capacity.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Modifications recommended on retainable amounts of groundfish species

October 22, 2025 — Federal fishery management officials meeting in early October in Anchorage recommended modifying regulations that implement maximum retainable amounts of groundfish species.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) recently noted that there is broad support from multiple fishing sectors in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea for moving forward with this action, adding that the analytical document is clear on the positive benefits their action will have for multiple fleets.

The council said its preferred alternatives would improve regulations that implement the maximum retainable amounts, as well as clarify their current regulations, make maximum retainable amount calculations easier, reduce regulatory discards, ease regulatory burden, and address medical, mechanical and weather issues that can impact those calculations.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Alaska Supreme Court backs lower court, dismissing challenge to state’s salmon management

October 15, 2025 — The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that a lower court acted correctly in dismissing an Alaska resident’s challenge to the state’s salmon management, noting that the lawsuit did not actually challenge any government action.

“He did not challenge any specific policy, regulation, or action by the state,” the Alaska Supreme Court said in its opinion. “The superior court ruled the claims were nonjusticiable and dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted. We affirm the superior court’s ruling that the resident failed to state a justiciable claim.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Alaska Supreme Court upholds dismissal of lawsuit challenging Yukon-Kuskokwim salmon management

October 13, 2025 — Alaska judges will not hear a lawsuit alleging that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has mishandled the state’s valuable salmon returns.

On Friday, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld a lower-court decision that dismissed a case brought by Juneau resident Eric Forrer in 2022.

Forrer had argued that years of declining salmon returns in the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers clearly showed that the department was violating a section of the Alaska Constitution that requires fish be managed for sustained yield.

Forrer, a long-time Alaska resident, has a history of personal-use and commercial fishing, including on the Yukon River.

In his suit, he sought a declaration confirming that the Fish and Game was violating the constitution and sought an injunction directing the department “to fulfill the sustained yield mandate.”

Bethel Superior Court Judge Nathaniel Peters dismissed the case in 2023, but Forrer appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

In an 18-page order published Friday, the five-member court said unanimously that because Forrer didn’t challenge a specific policy, law or regulation, Peters was correct and the case should be dismissed.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Government shutdown creates uncertainty for fisheries management in waters off Alaska

October 10, 2025 — For the organization that oversees commercial fisheries in federal waters off Alaska, the most significant impact of the federal government shutdown might materialize in December.

That is when the North Pacific Fishery Management Council is scheduled to issue harvest limits for Alaska pollock – the nation’s top-volume commercial harvested species – and other types of groundfish harvested in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, such as Pacific cod and sablefish.

The Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska pollock harvests start in January.

To set the groundfish harvest levels, the council relies on federal scientists’ analysis of fish stocks in the ocean, work that is based in large part on scientific surveys conducted over the summer.

But during the shutdown, most National Marine Fisheries Service employees, including the scientists who analyze survey data to assess the conditions of commercially targeted fish stocks, are furloughed.

On Wednesday, the last day of the council’s October meeting, the members considered how to deal with scientific uncertainty if the government shutdown prevents completion of the detailed analysis that is usually provided in time for the December meeting.

Council member Nicole Kimball referred to a warning issued eight days prior by Bob Foy, director of the NMFS Alaska Fisheries Science Center, the organization that does the stock assessments. Foy said then that a shutdown lasting more than five days would compromise the ability to complete stock assessments and that a shutdown beyond 15 working days would “dramatically impact” those assessments.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon