Saving Seafood

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

ALASKA: Smarter nets and faster data for the Alaska pollock fishery

October 10, 2025 — In Alaska’s pollock fishery, the largest in the United States and among the most productive in the world, every tow carries not just pollock but the risk of catching salmon.

For decades, commercial fishermen and scientists have collaborated to reduce salmon bycatch, refining net designs, developing exclusion devices, and implementing vessel notification systems to steer clear of populated areas. New technology is emerging that utilizes artificial intelligence, specifically a tool called You Only Look Once, version 11 (YOLOv11), which could help fishermen and scientists evaluate salmon excluders more efficiently, accurately, and potentially at a lower cost.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Gradual improvements in Bering Sea crab stocks allow for Alaska harvest increases

October 9, 2025 — Snow crab stocks in Alaska’s Bering Sea, which crashed a few years ago, have recovered enough to allow a modest harvest starting in mid-October.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Monday announced that fishermen will be allowed to harvest 9.3 million pounds of Bering Sea snow crab from Oct. 15 to May. The harvest cap is about twice the 4.72 million pounds allowed in the past season, which followed an unprecedented two-year period of closed harvests.

The Bering Sea snow crab harvest closures came after catastrophic losses that scientists have attributed to an intense, multiyear marine heatwave that started in 2018.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Alaska crab fishery shows signs of recovery after massive crash

October 8, 2025 — Bering Sea crabbers will see a boost in catch limits this season, after years of cancellations and small harvests due to low snow and king crab stocks.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday that it’s nearly doubling the harvest for the upcoming Bering Sea snow crab commercial fishing season from last year’s totals.

Fish and Game set the cap at 9.3 million pounds. That’s a low number compared to historic levels. In 1991, crabbers harvested more than 320 million pounds of snow crab.

The catch limit was set at 45 million pounds back in 2020, the year before the snow crab stock crashed. And the next year, the fishery closed for two seasons after more than 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the region.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Bering Sea snow crab fishery sees major TAC increase for 2025

October 8, 2025 — Bering Sea commercial snow crab fisheries will open on Oct. 15 with a total allowable catch (TAC) of 9.3 million pounds, nearly double the TAC allocated for the 2024-25 season.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game apportioned the catch to include 8.37 million pounds for individual fishing quota (IFQ) and 930,000 pounds for community development quota (CDQ), based on the 2025 estimate of total mature snow crab biomass above the required threshold.

“With the snow crab harvest levels roughly doubling for the upcoming season, crabbers are relieved to see the stock improving,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “Boats are gearing up, and crabbers are ready to go fishing,” said Goen, who was appointed to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in August of 2024, to the Washington seat vacated with the death of Kenny Down.

Read the full article at the Cordova Times

Warming water has varied impact on salmon populations

October 8, 2025 — Wild salmon are super weird for a variety of reasons, including response to warming climate conditions, says fisheries researcher Peter Westley of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Salmon have really evolved in places with changing conditions, including volcanoes blowing up, glaciers melting and making really good salmon habitat,” Westley said on Wednesday, Sept. 24, in a webinar from his office on the Fairbanks campus. “Salmon are experiencing the front lines of (environmental) changes. Trends across the globe since 1991, the rate of warming is much, much faster in the Arctic. Salmon are experiencing warming and rapid change of warming.”

To maintain healthy salmon populations, the fish need cool, complex, connected, clean habitat, said Westley, an associate professor and Wakefield chair of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at UAF’s Department of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Connectivity is important so that the salmon have the ability to move around, he said. It is also important to protect the processes important to the fish, like the way groundwater comes up to cool the water, and gravel has to come into the streams, he said.

“Salmon bury their offspring alive and leave them in the gravel for months on end, nine to 10 months under the gravel.  They are born in fresh water, and then they decide freshwater is not for them and migrate to the ocean, and then they come back,” he said. “They can fill up streams in very high density and go back to their natal streams. They fight their way back home, and their bodies decay and become nutrients for others, including bears. Salmon are weird, but also awesome.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

US judge dismisses NGO lawsuit challenging North Pacific trawling

October 8, 2025 — U.S. district court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by conservation NGO Oceana challenging bottom trawling in the North Pacific, finding that NOAA Fisheries acted in accordance with the law in regulating commercial fishing in the area.

Oceana filed the lawsuit in August 2024 in an effort to block bottom trawling in the North Pacific, an activity the group claims can cause substantial damage to seafloor coral and sponge habitats.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource