Saving Seafood

Alaska’s pollock industry looks to get to the bottom of a rising criticism

April 23, 2025 — Alaska pollock is one of the world’s most valuable fisheries, due to the enormous annual harvest volume and the versatility of the white, mild-flavored fish, federal economists say.

Fairly or unfairly, the pollock fishery’s prodigious size makes it an easy target on controversial issues such as salmon bycatch.

Lately, another criticism has taken on a higher profile – the charge that the pollock industry’s pelagic nets aren’t really “midwater” gear, but rather touch bottom much of the time, damaging seafloor habitat and mangling king and Tanner crab. These crab fisheries have seen total closures in recent years due to stock declines primarily attributed to changes in the marine environment.

To address the bottom contact issue, the pollock industry is embarking on an ambitious project to gain a better understanding of how its trawl gear works in the water and, possibly, to develop improved designs.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Global Extinction Risk for Sharks and Rays Is High, United States may Provide Haven

December 9, 2024 — Overfishing of sharks and rays has depleted many populations, causing widespread erosion of ecological function and exceptionally high extinction risk. NOAA Fisheries coauthored a study in the journal Science that quantifies the extinction risk for the world’s 1,199 sharks and ray species over 50 years. They found that while sharks and rays are at high risk of extinction and biodiversity loss globally, this risk differs by habitat and region. There are some “bright spots” that could help species survive.

Sharks Are In Rough Shape Globally

We found that sharks and rays globally are in a worse conservation state than all other vertebrate groups, apart from amphibians. We also demonstrated the “fishing down” of shark and ray biodiversity and ecosystem function. This shows that the largest species declined first and most rapidly.

Most sharks and rays have slow population growth rates, which makes them highly vulnerable to overfishing and subsequently takes populations longer to rebuild. Around the world, sharks and rays are targeted for their fins, meat, gill plates, and liver oil. They are also caught incidentally—as bycatch—in other fisheries.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

ALASKA: Chinook bycatch shuts down pollock fishery in Central Gulf of Alaska

October 8, 2024 — Commercial fishing for pollock in the Central Gulf of Alaska came to a halt on Sept. 25, leaving 50,000 tons of the whitefish in the water, when shut down by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to prevent exceeding the limit on Chinook salmon prohibited species catch (PSC). The action taken by Jon M. Kurland, regional administrator for the Alaska Region of NMFS, came after the captain of one of 19 trawlers fishing for pollock in the Central Gulf pulled up a net with an estimated 2,000 Chinook salmon.

The Chinook prohibited species catch in this pollock trawl fisheries is 18,316 Chinook salmon. As of Sept. 27, NMFS data indicated the PSC estimate for Chinook salmon in the central Gulf pollock fishery at 19,665 fish. In last week’s incident, the captain immediately notified the partner trawler he was fishing with and they both notified the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank of the bycatch. Both are local vessels based in Kodiak.

Total PSC estimates are calculated using verified information collected by observers.

“This was unprecedented,” said Julie Bonney, owner and executive director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank. “Over the last 20 years, there has never been that much prohibit species salmon taken in one tow of the trawlers fishing in the Central Gulf for pollock.”

Measures taken by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to minimize bycatch worked —but the cost to fishermen, processors and the city of Kodiak will be in the millions of dollars, Bonney said. The 19 trawlers had caught just 18,000 tons of pollock.

Closing down the fishery left 50,000 tons of pollock in the ocean, which will impact jobs of commercial fishing crews, processing company workers, and myriad businesses that are engaged with the fishing industry. Bonney said she even got a call from a Kodiak man whose company services vending machines in the processing facilities in Kodiak.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Lawsuit seeks to enforce seafood import bans

August 9, 2024 — Multiple conservation groups are suing the federal government to protect marine mammals from bycatch in foreign fishing gear.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Animal Welfare Institute filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. Court of International Trade against the departments of the Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security over alleged failures to enforce the imports provision of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The groups are seeking to protect marine mammals from bycatch in foreign fishing gear by requiring countries that export their seafood to the United States to provide evidence that their bycatch prevention measures meet U.S. fisheries standards.

Read the full article at E&E News

The Supreme Court’s trawl bycatch decision casts a wide net

July 24, 2024 — A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could have important implications for fisheries in Alaska.

Last month, the Supreme Court overturned a legal principle called Chevron deference, named after the case that established it. For 40 years, that principle gave federal agencies wide authority to interpret the gray area in laws passed by Congress. Now, more of that authority will go to judges.

The decision came after a legal battle over who should pay for bycatch monitors on trawl boats. The potential effects extend to all federally regulated industries — including fisheries.

Many trawl boats are required to have bycatch observers onboard. And in Alaska, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council can have trawl boats pay for those observers. That’s the law. It’s spelled out in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs commercial fishing.

But that act is not clear on who should pay for bycatch observers elsewhere. In the Atlantic, a federal agency created a similar funding program and a trawling business sued.

“And so (the National Marine Fisheries Service) used its agency authority to interpret the statute and fill in the gap and say, ‘Well, you know, we’re going to do what we do in the North Pacific region here in the Atlantic region.’ And the court said, ‘Nope, you can’t do that,’” said Anna Crary, an environmental lawyer at the firm Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP in Anchorage. She’s been watching that court case.

That Supreme Court decision, in a case known as Loper Bright, was a reversal of policy the Court formed in a 1984 environmental lawsuit called Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council.

That doctrine said that when federal laws are vague, federal agencies should fill in the gaps, and courts should defer to the expertise of those agencies. Crary said that understanding of agency power has become a baseline assumption.

“Administrative law, unbeknownst to many people, really forms the backbone of what we perceive as our everyday life, as modern society. But the extent to which this decision destabilizes that, I think is quite profound,” Crary said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Agency critics slam federal oversight of bycatch

July 18, 2024 — The agency that oversees the performances of federal agencies gave a sobering assessment of those tasked with monitoring bycatch in US fisheries.

That oversight falls to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), also called NOAA Fisheries, which agreed with the troubling performance outlined in a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

In a June report to the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee titled “Efforts to Reduce and Monitor Unintentional Catch and Harm Need Better Tracking,” the GAO addressed four issues: measures used to reduce bycatch, coverage, and funding of fisheries observers, how bycatch estimates are developed and reported and how NMFS tracks its performance towards reducing and monitoring bycatch.

It added: “NMFS’ efforts to track its performance in reducing and monitoring bycatch do not align with key elements of evidence-based policymaking related to performance management.”

The GAO outlined numerous ways in which NMFS has failed to adequately tackle bycatch issues and blamed a lack of observer coverage overall. NMFS replied that it needs more funding to recruit and retain observers, but it hasn’t communicated that need to Congress.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US Government Accountability Office report finds NFMS bycatch monitoring doesn’t meet standards

July 15, 2024 — A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is not measuring up to bycatch-monitoring standards.

In its 60-page report, GAO outlined a number of ways in which NFMS has failed to adequately tackle bycatch issues and harm to marine mammals and other species. According to the report, a central failing from the NMFS was a lack of observer coverage of fisheries.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Environmentalists threaten to sue NJ, NY and Delaware over Atlantic sturgeon bycatch

July 12, 2024 — Atlantic sturgeon have been around for 70 million years — predating the dinosaurs. These monumental fish with shark-like fins even survived the Chicxulub asteroid, which caused the great extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

But the species that once thrived in the Philadelphia region’s waterways has become endangered, threatened by habitat loss, dams, poor water quality and vessel strikes. In the Delaware River, only about 250 estimated sturgeon remain, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Sturgeon are also caught in fishing nets and injured by boats during the commercial fishing of other types of fish such as striped bass and summer flounder.

Read the full article at the NJ Spotlight News

More Alaska groups join salmon bycatch lawsuit

December 8, 2023 — Alaska Native and fisheries conservation organizations have gone to federal court in support of a lawsuit challenging how the National Marine Fisheries Service manages North Pacific trawl fisheries.

The amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief is a response to the lawsuit brought by the Association of Village Council Presidents, Tanana Chiefs Conference, and city officials of Bethel, Alaska, against federal fisheries managers. The lawsuit alleges that NMFS has “violated the National Environmental Policy Act by authorizing large-scale industrial fishing companies to catch billions of pounds of fish without appropriately considering the impacts in light of rapid environmental changes, ongoing species collapses, and closures on in-river salmon fisheries,” according to the supporters.

The new brief was filed by the groups Native Peoples Action, Ocean Conservancy, Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, SalmonState and Alaska Marine Conservation Council in United States District Court in Alaska.

It’s the latest legal maneuver in the ongoing fight between the trawler fleet and other advocacy groups over salmon bycatch and environmental effects.

“If successful, the litigation could lead to better consideration of the impacts of industrial fishing and precautionary measures designed to minimize bycatch and killing of species like salmon, herring, crab and halibut,” according to a joint statement by SalmonState and the allied groups.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Conservation groups call on US to ban foreign seafood over whale and dolphin bycatch

December 8, 2023 — Conservation groups want NOAA Fisheries to ban imports from foreign fisheries that are not adequately working to prevent marine mammal bycatch.

“By continuing to allow imports that do not meet U.S. standards, [NOAA Fisheries] NMFS chooses business as usual over the survival of some of the most amazing species on the planet,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Attorney and Global Biodiversity Conservation Director Zak Smith said. “Because NMFS has failed to safeguard ocean biodiversity, future generations may never have the chance to protect invaluable marine life.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource