Saving Seafood

Feds deny petition to list two Oregon Chinook salmon populations as endangered

December 10, 2025 — A group of environmental nonprofits filed a petition in 2022 to protect the spring-run Chinook along the Oregon Coast and part of Northern California.

Jeff Miller from the Center for Biological Diversity said spring-run Chinook are more threatened by habitat changes than fish that return in the fall.

“Spring-run are blocked in their migration to where they ideally want to go,” Miller said. “A lot of their former spawning habitat is blocked above major dams.”

Spring-run Chinook return from the ocean much earlier than the fall-run salmon and will stay in deep-water pools until the fall, when they head further upstream to spawn. That means spring-run Chinook often spawn further upstream than fall-run.

Read the full article at KLCC

Pacific halibut catches declined this year

December 9, 2025 — The Pacific halibut fishery ended on Dec. 7, and by all accounts, things remained on a stagnant trend. Stakeholders are dealing with the fallout from the lowest Pacific halibut spawning biomass in 40 years, and harvesters widely reported catches of fewer and smaller fish.

The annual survey conducted since 1963 by the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) revealed little change in the halibut stock that stretches from Alaska’s northern Bering Sea, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon to California’s Monterey Bay.

By early December, coast-wide commercial landings of halibut totaled 16.7 million pounds, down 16 percent from the same time last year and reflecting just  80 percent of the allowable catch limit in 2025.

According to a report by the IPHC at its interim meeting on December 2, total halibut takes (called mortalities) from all sectors – commercial, sport, personal use, and subsistence – were 28.8 million pounds, down 12% from last year, and marking the lowest removals in 100 years.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US Congress holds hearing on sea lion removals and salmon predation

December 4, 2025 — The U.S. House Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee held a hearing on sea lion predation on salmon and the effectiveness of killing the mammals to slow down the trend.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), sea lions skyrocketed from a population of roughly 10,000 in the 1950s to 250,000 today. That spike has been seen as a success story for the MMPA, but it’s also had a major impact on salmon populations, which are a key food source for pinnipeds. By traveling upriver to avoid their natural predators – orcas – sea lions are able to feast on already struggling salmon populations. Since 2002, California and Steller sea lions have eaten roughly 98,000 salmon at just two sites: Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls, Oregon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Anglers Catch Salmon for Science as Tracking Reveals Risks Facing Adult Fall Chinook

December 2, 2025 — Many thousands of fall-run Chinook salmon migrated beneath the Golden Gate Bridge into the upper Sacramento River to spawn this fall. About 100 of the adult fish carried small tags that signaled their location as they went.

A monitoring network tracked the fish, showing their progress online in real time as part of a joint project by scientists at NOAA Fisheries and UC Santa Cruz. They followed adult salmon through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into Central Valley Rivers and their tributaries. The scientists want to know what affects salmon survival and how many fish reach their spawning grounds.

“Are the salmon burning too much energy, and what factors affect this?” asked Miles Daniels, who leads the project for NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. The center operates a research laboratory adjacent to UC Santa Cruz, focusing on salmon. Adult salmon need cold water; they may stop if they hit water that is too warm. Since they do not eat on the way back upriver, delays could deplete the energy they need to complete their migration and spawn.

The research is funded by California’s State Water Board to learn more about how water temperatures influence the salmon that support valuable commercial and recreational fisheries. Officials are interested in whether water can be managed to benefit fish while still supplying Central Valley farms with irrigation water. Irrigation is vital to the production of billions of dollars worth of produce and other agricultural products every year.

Fall Chinook salmon are among today’s most abundant California salmon and have long formed the backbone of West Coast salmon fisheries. However, low numbers of returning salmon have closed California ocean waters to most recreational and all commercial salmon fishing for the last 3 years.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

U.S. Moves To Start Offshore Fish Farming In Federal Waters

December 1, 2025 — The U.S. government has identified 13 locations in federal waters off California and Texas as potential sites to farm seafood and other aquaculture products.

The agency leading this effort is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through its National Marine Fisheries Service. The latter manages over 4 million square miles of ocean in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone and has jurisdiction over 163 endangered and threatened marine species.

Among the core functions of the National Fisheries is to oversee sustainable fisheries, while promoting healthy ecosystems and safe seafood.

“Americans eat roughly $15 billion in seafood farmed and imported from foreign countries, where labor and environmental standards often fall short of America’s rigorous standards. By expanding domestic aquaculture to complement wild-harvest fisheries, NOAA is driving an America-first approach that creates jobs, supports coastal communities and ensures high-quality, homegrown seafood for American families,” NOAA noted in a September statement.

Read the full article at Forbes

CALIFORNIA: New generation of San Francisco crab fishermen await upcoming Dungeness season

November 25, 2025 — Bay Area commercial crab fishermen are waiting for another assessment in December to get a better idea of when they’ll get the green light to harvest Dungeness crab.

Years of shortened seasons have led many to leave the industry. But that’s not stopping some younger generation fishermen.

Just one fishing boat is docked at Pier 45 in San Francisco, with its crew unloading their catch.

It will be another late night for Jonathan Tin and best friend Hunter Nguyen. They haven’t slept much lately, with most of their days and nights at sea.

“We just love it. There’s nothing else like it, going out there,” said Tin.

Read the full article at CBS News

Trump administration releases its expanded oil and gas drilling plan

November 21, 2025 — Californians were already gearing up for battle even before the Trump administration released a draft plan on Nov. 20 that proposes a broad expansion of oil and gas drilling and lease sales along America’s coasts, including California, Alaska and west of Florida.

The Department of the Interior announced as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales across 21 of 27 existing Outer Continental Shelf planning areas, covering roughly 1.27 billion acres. That includes 21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Gulf of America and six along the Pacific coast.

The plan quickly drew opposition from state leaders and environmental groups – and support from some business organizations. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office fully opposes the plan.

Read the full article at USA Today

Latest survey shows slight increase in critically endangered vaquita population

November 11, 2025 — Scientists surveying the Upper Gulf of California for the critically endangered vaquita porpoise have confirmed sightings of between 7 to 10 individuals and the birth of new calves, a slight increase from the 2024 survey, which marked the lowest results ever recorded.

Found only in the Northern Gulf of California off the coast of Mexico, the vaquita porpoise is among the planet’s most endangered species. The population has seen a steady decline since its first survey in 1997, when scientists estimated roughly 567 individuals. By 2024, that number had fallen to just eight – the lowest level ever documented – with no sightings of newly born calves.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Judge rules NOAA must release bycatch photos from trawlers

November 4, 2025 — A federal judge in California has ordered NOAA to release photos, videos and other visual data documenting the catch of nontargeted species by the state’s halibut trawl fishery.

In a ruling, Judge Josephine Staton of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California told NOAA to release 77 photographs to the environmental group Oceana detailing the bycatch of fish and marine mammals caught up in nets used by bottom trawlers off the California coast.

Oceana had requested the photos in 2022 under a public records request, but NOAA declined to provide them, citing an exemption where the release of documents violates nondisclosure provisions in federal law. NOAA argued that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act prohibited the release of the photos because doing so could identify the identities of fisheries observers whose identities were to be kept private.

Read the full article at E&E News

CALIFORNIA: Recreational crab season opens along the Sonoma Coast as state warns of biotoxin risk

November 3, 2025 — There’s a catch to this year’s crab season and it’s not just in the traps.

The recreational Dungeness crab season opened Saturday along the Sonoma Coast, but state officials are warning fishers about potentially dangerous levels of domoic acid in the crabs’ internal organs.

In a health advisory issued Oct. 24, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Public Health said unhealthy levels of the naturally occurring toxin have been found in the viscera, or the internal organs of the crab. Officials warned that cooking the crab does not destroy the toxin, advising fishers to not ingest any part of the viscera.

Domoic acid poisoning in humans can cause nausea, dizziness and in severe cases, even memory loss or death, public health officials cautioned.

Despite the warnings, recreational crabbers can still hit the seas, unlike Bodega Bay’s Dick Ogg and other commercial fisherman who have been sidelined following seven straight years of season delays to protect endangered marine life from entanglements.

For Ogg, who predicts the commercial season will once again not open until January, and other fishermen across the state, these delays take a major toll on their profit margins.

“The impact is significant,” Ogg said Saturday. “What we have lost is our Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s crab market. Everything has been pushed ahead to when people are less interested in getting the resource. It’s a lot more difficult and the financial impact to everyone is pretty significant.”

Read the full article at East Bay Times