Saving Seafood

Fishermen challenge sea otter protections in Calif. waters

May 22, 2026 — Otters and California’s sea urchin and lobster fisheries are a bad mix, and fishermen are taking legal action to protect themselves from the marine mammal.

“We’ve filed two petitions,” says Nate Hotes, a lawyer with the fishermen’s advocacy organization Pacific Legal Foundation.

“There are two timelines,” says Hotes. “The first is the delisting of the otters under the Endangered Species Act. Back in 2003, the Southern California sea otter population was 3,090 animals above the threshold for listing. We have been trying for the last ten years to get them delisted, and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) hasn’t moved.”

To provoke action by the FWS on delisting, Hotes reports that the PLF filed a petition on April 24, 2026, requesting that the California otters be delisted. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “But they’re supposed to respond to that in 90 days.”

Read the the full article at the National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: California launches AI detection network as whale deaths skyrocket

May 21, 2026 — Ferries, cargo ships and tankers cut through choppy waters in the San Francisco Bay on Tuesday as a whale surfaced nearby, its spout barely visible against the white caps. Until now, whales could easily go unnoticed by mariners, but an AI-powered detection network launched this week is designed to track them day and night.

The system, called WhaleSpotter, scans the bay around the clock for whale blows and heat signatures up to two nautical miles away, alerting mariners to slow down or reroute when whales are nearby.

“They’ll be able to make adjustments way before they get anywhere close,” said Thomas Hall, director of operations for San Francisco Bay Ferry.

“It will also allow us to track data over time and see where the whales are camping out so we can adjust our routes during whale season to avoid those areas completely.”

The effort comes amid an alarming rise in gray whale deaths in the bay.

Last year, 21 dead gray whales were found in the wider Bay Area — the highest number in 25 years, according to The Marine Mammal Center — with at least 40% killed by ship strikes.

Read the full article at The New York Post

CALIFORNIA: Commercial crabbing continues as Calif. expands trap restrictions

May 20, 2026 — California officials are expanding recreational crab trap restrictions along part of the state’s coast as humpback whales return to state waters, while commercial Dungeness crab fishing opportunities will remain open in some areas under existing management measures.

According to a May 15 announcement from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), recreational crab traps will be prohibited in Fishing Zone 3, stretching from the Sonoma/Mendocino County line south to Pigeon Point, beginning at 6 p.m. on May 22. The move is intended to reduce the risk of whale entanglements under California’s Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program (RAMP).

CDFW said recreational take of Dungeness crab by other methods, including hoop nets and crab snares, will still be allowed through the close of the season. Existing recreational crab trap prohibitions in Fishing Zones 4 and 5 will also remain in effect.

Commercial opportunities continue in other portions of the fishery, though restrictions remain in place. In Northern California’s Fishing Zones 1 and 2, the commercial fleet continues operating under a 15% gear reduction and 30-fathom depth constraint. Fishing Zone 3 closed to standard commercial gear on April 30, but approved alternative “pop-up” gear remains authorized.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Rising California sea temperatures trigger legal requirement to protect endangered sea turtles

May 19, 2026 — A heatwave in the Pacific Ocean has triggered a legal requirement to protect loggerhead sea turtles, which are endangered species listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

In a bulletin issued Monday morning, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) stated that officials from their office notified the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries of its legal responsibility to close a large area of the Pacific coast off to swordfish drift gillnets.

A drift gillnet is a type of fishing net that is not fixed to the seabed but allowed to drift with the current and is used to catch fish by having them swim into it. Some drift gillnet fleets can be over 10 kilometers (roughly 6.2 miles) long, and several fleets may be fished by a vessel at once, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Now, with the unusually warm waters off Southern California, wildlife officials say the NOAA Fisheries must act before June 1 to avoid a lawsuit.

Read the full article at KTLA

CALIFORNIA: Local salmon available for the first time in years

May 19, 2026 — California’s commercial salmon fishery is open for the first time in three years. David Toriumi owns a boat out of the Santa Cruz Harbor and spoke to KAZU while trying to get a long metal pole ready to go back onto his boat.

“ The weather was so rough out there that it actually ripped it off of my boat,” he said.

Gale force winds and rough waves have forced boats to come in early in the day, but Toriumi says the catch has been about as expected.

A few docks away, H&H Fresh Fish has locally caught salmon at the retail counter for the first time in three years. Co-owner Hans Haveman says the first few days of the season were uncertain.

Read the full article at KAZU

Birds dying along California beaches as marine heat wave intensifies

May 14, 2026 — The ocean off California’s coast is heating up again, with marine heat wave conditions stretching across much of the eastern Pacific. In some areas, sea surface temperatures are running 4 to 8 degrees above average.

At the Scripps Institution of Oceanography pier in La Jolla, ocean temperatures have reached record highs on more than 30 days through April, with roughly one in five days this year setting a record for that date.

Scientists say the warming is already reshaping conditions along the California coast, where shifts in ocean temperature ripple quickly through the food web — from plankton to fish to the birds and marine mammals that depend on them.

Read the full article at VC Star

Wildlife faces die-off risk as marine heat wave lingers over California

May 13, 2026 — The ocean off California’s coast is heating up again — and this time, the impacts are showing up on shore.

The marine heat wave has developed across much of the West Coast, stretching from Washington to California. In some areas, ocean temperatures have climbed 4 to 8 degrees above average. At the Scripps Pier in San Diego, ocean temperatures have logged record-high readings on more than 30 days through April, with about one-fifth of the year so far reaching record levels for that location.

Scientists have long warned of this pattern: when ocean temperatures spike, the effects move quickly through the food web, from plankton to fish to the animals that depend on them.

Read the full article at USA TODAY

CALIFORNIA: San Francisco tech billionaire pushes to restore Dungeness crab season for Thanksgiving

May 4, 2026 — A San Francisco tech billionaire is leading an effort to bring back local crab in time for Thanksgiving, arguing the issue is about more than tradition. He said it’s also about supporting struggling fishermen and finding a better balance with marine life protections.

Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple and head of the Clean Break Fund, is pushing for changes to the way California manages its commercial Dungeness crab season. In recent years, the season has been delayed from its traditional mid-November start to as late as January in an effort to reduce whale entanglements, cutting into what fishermen say is their most profitable time of year.

For fishermen like Casey Crowl, the shorter season has taken a toll.

“It’s a reduction. It means that you’ve got to just work that much harder,” Crowl said.

Read the full article at CBS News

Record ocean heat off California coast echoes ‘Blob,’ killing seabirds and reshaping weather outlook

May 4, 2026 — Over the past several months, an intense marine heat wave has developed in the Pacific from Washington to Baja Mexico, with a particularly extreme hot spot between the Bay Area and San Diego. Ocean temperatures have spiked to as much as 7 degrees hotter than average, with many places breaking records for this time of year.

The heatwave off the California coast is already causing starving birds to wash ashore and could increase the risk of thunderstorms and dry lightning that could worsen the wildfire season, scientists say.

Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have recorded 38 days since Jan. 1 when the surface temperature off their La Jolla pier in San Diego broke records going as far back as 1916. On March 20, the ocean there reached 71 degrees, the hottest ever recorded in March and a level normally seen in August.

“It’s extreme,” said Melissa Carter, a Scripps oceanographer. “We have had heat waves in the past. But this is a record event for the duration and the intensity.”

Farther north, ocean temperatures also have broken records on 31 days this year off Newport Beach; 38 off Santa Barbara; 22 at Pacific Grove near Monterey; 9 days at the Farallon Islands off San Francisco; and 14 at Trinidad in Humboldt County.

Read the full article at The Miami Hearld

A crypto billionaire is taking up the fight to bring crab back for Thanksgiving

May 1, 2026 — Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen is leading an effort to extend the Northern California crabbing season that has steadily shrunk over the past six years, taking up the cause of fishermen who claim their industry has been dying in the face of regulations meant to protect migrating whales.

State regulators implemented a system known as RAMP in 2020 that automatically delays or closes the commercial Dungeness crab season when humpback whale sightings or entanglements in crab gear reach a set threshold. Since then, the season — which once ran from November through summer — has largely been pushed to a January start, with closures arriving in spring.

For years, local fishermen have bemoaned what they claim(opens in new tab) is a blunt-force approach. Larsen is launching an initiative to expand the commercial crabbing season with the aid of a dedicated legal team so local fishermen can again start crabbing as early as November.

Read the full article at The San Fransisco Standard