Saving Seafood

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

ALASKA: Indigenous leaders, scientists, and policy makers call for bold actions to address Yukon River salmon crisis

August 5, 2025 — Tribes should be allowed to harvest the same number of Yukon River chinook salmon that trawlers scoop up in the Bering Sea as bycatch, and an independent review is needed to better manage the salmon crisis on Alaska’s longest river. These are just two of the recommendations outlined in a recent policy brief that looks at near-term strategies for addressing the crisis on the Yukon.

Doug DeMaster, a retired biologist who spent nearly two decades with the top federal fisheries agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), co-authored the brief published in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research (AAAR).

“What we tried to do in this brief is put together a document that identifies what’s needed, what’s wanted, and tries to do it in a way that’s easily amenable to Congress, and politicians, and both state and federal agencies,” DeMaster said.

The two-page document was assembled by a mix of tribal leaders, scientists, and policy makers. It boils down potential factors driving crashes for both chinook and chum salmon on the Yukon River. Among them: bycatch and ecosystem changes in the Bering Sea driven by the pollock fishery, warmer water temperatures, competition with hatchery salmon, the Area M intercept fishery, and increasing rates of parasitic infection in Yukon River chinook.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Alaska experts recommend management overhaul to rescue Yukon River salmon runs

August 4, 2025 — A management overhaul is needed to address the faltering salmon runs in the Yukon River and the widespread harms that have resulted from shortages of fish along the river’s basin, according to a report by Indigenous leaders and Alaska scientists.

The report, a peer-reviewed policy brief published in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, proposes an independent review of Yukon River chinook and chum salmon issues by an entity like the National Academy of Sciences. It also recommends bigger management and science roles for Indigenous residents who live along the river, which flows nearly 2,000 miles from Canada’s Yukon Territory to the Bering Sea.

Building relationships between tribal members and government managers will likely require long-term effort, says the report, which has co-authors from various organizations, including the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Trust between Indigenous communities and fisheries scientists and managers needs to be enhanced by continuously, transparently, and equitably combining quantitative fisheries analyses with Indigenous Knowledge,” the report says.

The report recommends a “cultural exemption” for small-scale personal harvests by river residents to help address inequities between commercial and subsistence fishermen.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

NPFMC says pelagic trawl gear impact needs further evaluation

June 17, 2025 — Federal fisheries managers have given the Bering Sea pollock industry until the December of 2025 to develop spatial closures for the 2026 groundfish A season to protect Bristol Bay red king crab.

The decision reached by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) at its June meeting in Oregon is based on new winter pot surveys, tagging data and other recent data sources, the council said in its motion of June 8. The council requested information from the industry to be presented at its December meeting in Anchorage.

The council also acknowledged the lengthy Pelagic Trawl Gear Innovation Discussion Paper available in May and requested an update on the progress of that initiative at its meeting of April 2026, by which time the field study portion of the protect for catcher processors is expected to be complete.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Ice all but disappeared from this Alaskan island. It changed everything.

April 28, 2025 — This tiny island in the middle of the Bering Sea had recently completed its longest winter stretch in recorded history with above-freezing temperatures — 343 consecutive hours, or 14 days — when Aaron Lestenkof drove out to look at Sea Lion Neck.

It was another warm February day. He saw no sea ice; scant snow on the ground.

Lestenkof is one of the sentinels on the island, a small team with the Aleut tribe who monitors changes to the environment across these 43 square miles of windswept hills and tundra. He is also one of 338 residents who still manage to live on St. Paul, something that has become significantly more complicated as the Bering Sea warms around them.

Over the past decade, steadily warming waters have thrown the North Pacific into turmoil, wiping out populations of fish, birds and crabs, and exposing coastlines to ever more battering from winter storms. The upheaval in the waters has brought so much change to this remote island, where residents still fill their freezers with reindeer and seals, that it has forced many to consider how long they can last.

The warm waters killed off about 4 million common murres — the largest die-off of any bird species ever recorded in the modern era — including almost 80 percent of those that nested on St. Paul. They wiped out about 10 billion snow crabs; caused the collapse of the main Alaskan fishery that relied on them; and prompted the closing, three years ago, of St. Paul’s largest source of tax revenue, a Trident Seafoods crab processing plant.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Federal judge denies tribal claims in suit against federal fisheries managers

March 19, 2025 — A federal district court judge has denied a claim made by two regional tribal consortiums in Western Alaska that fisheries management in the Bering Sea violated environmental law.

United States District Court Judge Sharon Gleason denied the claims made by the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) and Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) in a judgement on March 11.

The Association of Village Council Presidents – the regional tribal consortium for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta – and the Tanana Chiefs Conference – the regional tribal consortium for much of western Interior Alaska – had sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages fisheries in the federal waters outside of Alaska. Two fisheries trade organizations with ties to the pollock industry – the At-Sea Processors Association and United Catcher Boats – joined in defense of federal fisheries managers.

The tribal organizations, along with the City of Bethel, claimed that recent groundfish harvest management in the Bering Sea wasn’t properly taking into account major changes to the ocean ecosystem, including fisheries collapses on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, and thus violated federal law under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Read the full article at KYUK