Saving Seafood

US lawmakers look to codify Arctic ambassador position

November 12, 2025 — U.S. legislators are looking to codify the federal office of the ambassador-at-large for Arctic affairs, a position established in 2022 to focus U.S. Department of State’s priorities on Arctic issues.

“The Arctic is a critical region for U.S. national security, economic development, and environmental preservation,” U.S. Representative Ami Bera (D-California) said in a release. “From increased ship traffic to growing competition with Russia and China, the United States must ensure we have a strong, unified presence in the Arctic. This legislation will help us do just that by formally establishing a senior diplomat position charged with leading and coordinating America’s Arctic strategy.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Study projects major changes in North Atlantic and Arctic marine ecosystems due to climate change

July 10, 2024 — New research predicts significant shifts in marine fish communities in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans as a result of climate warming.

The Nord University-led study projects a change in key  biomass and suggests that Arctic demersal fish will be at risk of local extinction by the end of the century if no  refugia is available at eastern latitudes.

The international team of experts, involving Newcastle University experts, analyzed data from 16,345 fishery-independent trawls conducted between 2004 and 2022, focusing on 107 marine fish  in the northeast Atlantic, including the Barents Sea. They used advanced modeling techniques to project changes in species distribution and biomass under three future climate scenarios for the years 2050 and 2100.

Read the full article at phys.org

5 signs the Arctic endured a record-hot summer

December 13, 2023 — This past summer was the hottest on record in the Arctic, which is warming nearly four times faster than any location on the planet. And the symptoms of that warming laid bare a rapidly changing region that in many ways barely resembles what it once was.

Key data points show that the Arctic continues to become less icy, wetter and greener, according to a report card released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday. The trends, all linked to a warming climate, have been observed for decades.

And they played out in dramatic ways this summer: Out-of-control wildfires forced entire communities to evacuate. A river surged from its banks and into homes because of dramatic glacial thinning. Near the peak of Greenland’s ice sheet, more than 10,000 feet above sea level, temperatures soared above freezing for only the fifth time on record.

Even amid rapid change, variability of weather patterns meant a few parts of the Arctic still exhibited some of the frigid norms of the past. For example, sea ice persisted for much of the summer in the East Siberian Sea, and a colder-than-normal spring slowed the melt of sea ice and snow cover in Alaska.

But the broader picture makes clear that the Arctic continues to change, with the past 17 years accounting for the 17 smallest annual minimum sea ice covers in the 45-year satellite record. This year, sea ice cover ranked sixth smallest, amid summer temperatures that were the Arctic’s hottest on record and a year that ranks sixth warmest.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

Climate Change Hitting Top U.S. Fishery in the Arctic: NOAA

December 11, 2019 — Climate change is causing chaos in the Bering Sea, home to one of America’s largest fisheries, an example of how rising temperatures can rapidly change ecosystems important to the economy, U.S. federal government scientists said in a report on Tuesday.

Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to decreases in sea ice, record warm temperatures at the bottom of the Bering Sea and the northward migration of fish species such as Pacific cod, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, said in its 2019 Arctic Report Card.

While the changes are widespread in the Arctic, the effect on wildlife is acute in the eastern shelf of the Bering Sea, which yields more than 40% of the annual U.S. fish and shellfish catch.

“The changes going on have the potential to influence the kinds of fish products you have available to you, whether that’s fish sticks in the grocery store or shellfish at a restaurant,” said Rick Thoman, a meteorologist in Alaska and one of the report’s authors.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Alaskan gives United Nations indigenous perspective on threats to Arctic fisheries

October 1, 2019 — For the first time, a branch of the United Nations is asking indigenous peoples to share their traditional knowledge about the evolution of Arctic fisheries. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held a seminar on the topic in Rome last week.

“For Inuit it is not only fishing,” said Dalee Sambo Dorough, Ph.D., a former political science professor at UAA and chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). “One of my main efforts was to broaden the discussion about food security, and the dialogue within the FAO about Arctic indigenous food security, and the importance of hunting as well as fishing and other harvesting activities.”

Dorough was one of dozens of representatives present at the meeting in Italy. One of the outcomes was a declaration that calls upon member states of the FAO to take further action to protect fisheries in the Arctic. The document is still pending final publication, following a public comment period this weekend.

Read the full story at KTVA

US, Russia, China, others to sign agreement preventing illegal fishing in Arctic

October 3, 2018 — The United States is set to join nine other countries and organizations in a first-of-its kind agreement to protect Arctic Ocean waters from commercial fishing.

The pact, scheduled to be signed Wednesday, 3 October in Ilslissat, Greenland, comes after two years of negotiations between countries with coastlines on the Arctic as well as other major fishing powers. Those nations concluded talks last November.

The agreement comes as polar melting has reduced the Arctic ice cap and open new areas in the central part of the ocean for vessels. That means commercial fishing may be viable in those areas.

However, nine years ago, the U.S. closed its exclusive economic zone in the Arctic off the northern Alaskan coast to commercial fishing operations until government officials learned more about the region’s ecosystem. Alaska fishermen have expressed fears that the melting could lead to foreign vessels fishing in U.S. waters.

In a statement released 1 October, the U.S. State Department said the Greenland agreement cuts down chances of illegal fishing taking place in U.S. waters currently off limits to American fishermen.

Under terms of the agreement, the participating nations must create plan to study the Arctic’s ecosystem and not just for fishing purposes.

Michael Byers, an international law professor at the University of British Columbia, praised the countries for their forward thinking on the matter in a Canadian Press article.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Climate change draws invasive species to the Arctic

February 27, 2018 — The Arctic is changing. Temperatures are increasing twice as fast as the global average and sea ice is retreating quicker than predicted.

It is now just a question of time before the Arctic becomes ice free in summer.

But while we humans react slowly to the problem at hand, evidence suggests that animals are on the move- on land, sea, and in the air. And in the cold Arctic, invasive species are drawn to regions where they could not previously have survived.

But invasive species pose a big problem for native animals, whose numbers can decline to the point of collapse. They also pose a threat to fisheries, with economic consequences on both a local and global scale.

In fact, our recent study showed that blue mussels have become much more common in the Arctic in recent years, just like other exotic species of bluefin tuna and killer whales.

Read the full story at Phys.org

 

Oil leasing in Arctic refuge included in tax deal

December 14, 2017 — A provision to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development is included in the tax bill agreed upon by Republicans serving on a joint House-Senate conference committee, according to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

The measure would authorize oil leasing within the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, a move Murkowski on Wednesday called “ the single most important step I believe we can (take) to strengthen our long-term energy security and create new wealth.”

The fate of the oil leasing in the refuge is now tied to the overall tax legislation expected to be voted on by the House and Senate in the days ahead.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

This Deep-Sea Fisherman Has Caught A Treasure Trove Of Underwater Oddities

December 22, 2016 — As the saying goes, there are plenty of fish in the sea — including some you may want to toss back.

A deep-sea fisherman in Russia has shared a captivating collection of creepy crawlies he has found in the depths of the Arctic Circle.

Roman Fedortsov, who fishes off northwest Russia’s coast, started tweeting out photos of his most unusual catches earlier this year, according to the Moscow Times.

Some of them appear straight out of a sci-fi movie, but we found marine biologists who insist they’re not.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post

Indigenous peoples of the world’s coastlines are losing their fisheries — and their way of life

December 5th, 2016 — The world loves seafood. According to some estimates, people consumed about 102 million tons of it last year.

A new study released Friday by the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program, based at the University of British Columbia, shows that indigenous people who live on the world’s coasts are definitely hooked. They consume 15 times more seafood per capita than people in other parts of the world, about 2.3 million tons, or about 2 percent of the global catch, the study said.

They don’t simply catch and eat fish and other seafood. It’s the heart of communities, the center of culture and religion, a gift from the heavens. Seafood is crucial to the cultures of coastal indigenous people in the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Arctic, among other places, and overfishing and the ocean-wide movement of fish due to climate change could wipe those resources out.

On the coast of Africa at the equator, huge commercial ships are starting to encroach on native fishing areas as ocean stocks diminish. In places such as Madagascar, the stocks of community fisheries have been nearly lost.

“These big industrial fisheries are chasing the fish. In West Africa, larger vessels are moving closer and closer to shore,” said Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor, research associate at the University of British Columbia and an author of the study published in PLOS One. “A lot of these indigenous communities, all they have are dugout canoes.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post