Saving Seafood

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

Federal fisheries managers hold Bering Sea pollock catch steady

December 9, 2025 — Federal fishery managers are keeping the Bering sea pollock quota flat next year, even as they move to sharply reduce catch limits in the Gulf of Alaska.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Sunday recommended the 2026 Bering Sea pollock total allowable catch at 1.375 million metric tons, the same as this year. The catch limit for the Aleutian Islands is another 19,000 metric tons.

Read the full article at KUCB

ALASKA: Alaska seeks more federal financial relief for Bering Sea snow crab fishery

December 9, 2025 — The U.S. state of Alaska has asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to issue a fishery disaster determination for the 2024/2025 Bering Sea snow crab season, which despite reopening after two years of closure, remains well below recent averages in terms of both harvest and revenue.

“The snow crab fishery has historically been the most productive crab fishery in the Bering Sea and supported one of the most valuable commercial fisheries in the Arctic,” Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy said in his letter, which noted that the fishery recorded gross revenue peaking at USD 219 million (EUR 188 million) in the 2020/2021 season.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Modified groundfish nets limit killer whale entanglements

November 4, 2025 — A large mesh panel, known as a “killer whale fence,” in Bering Sea deep-water flatfish trawl gear is proving successful at preventing killer whale entanglement in the lucrative commercial flounder and sole fisheries.

The modified gear, first tested fleetwide in 2024, resulted in a single entanglement for the whole summer season.  The fleet’s 2025 season ended without any mortalities, according to an Oct. 28 report by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The net modification was developed through a collaborative effort between UAF researcher Hannah Myers and the Alaska Seafood Cooperative, which coordinates a fleet targeting flounder and sole.  For 2023, the Bering Sea commercial flounder and sole fisheries were valued at over $45 million combined. Key species in this fishery complex include yellowfin sole and flathead sole, along with other flatfish managed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Groundfish captains working in the summer fishery first began noticing significantly more killer whale activity around their nets starting about 2020. Then, in 2023, there was a sudden rise in the entanglement of orcas in their nets.

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

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: 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: 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