Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: Successes from Klamath dam removal celebrated

October 20, 2025 — This month marks the one-year anniversary of dam removal along the lower Klamath River, the culmination of what has been described as “the world’s biggest dam removal project.”

During a virtual news conference on Oct. 9, environmental groups, tribal organizations and state and local agencies celebrated the milestone. Presenters described dramatic successes, as well as potential setbacks, in detail, outlining efforts along one of the most comprehensive environmental restoration efforts in history. ”

Just being out there in the community and talking to tribal fishermen, tribal members, sport fishermen … (and) the community at large, there’s this feeling that the river feels different,” Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, told attendees. “It feels stronger. It feels cleaner. Everyone who’s been out there has had a bit of a different experience this summer and fall, and that experience has been a positive one. So, we’re making progress. I would note the Klamath River is still in that process of healing from those dams, and the scars are still fresh, but the progress that we’ve made in just one year is pretty incredible, and … it provides us with a lot of hope for the future.”

Read the full article at the Sacramento Bee 

CALIFORNIA: California cuts production at salmon hatchery in half as federal funding dwindles

October 16, 2025 — The U.S. state of California has decided to cut production at one of its main salmon hatcheries in response to a drop in federal funding for the facility.

The Nimbus Hatchery on the American River was established to offset the loss of salmon habitat caused by the building of the Folsom and Nimbus dams. The hatchery is technically owned by the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), which provides funding to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to operate the facility. However, the bureau is slashing its financial support, providing just USD 2.5 million (EUR 2.1 million) for the current fiscal year, according to the Daily Kos.

“This is below the USD 3.16 million [EUR 2.7 million] required to maintain historical production levels and falls short of meeting federal mitigation obligations under the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. Exacerbating the problem, budget reductions are compounded by increasing production costs, tariffs, and inflation. To give an idea of cost, fish food alone can exceed USD 500,000 [EUR 428,000] annually at standard production levels,” CDFW Spokesperson Steve Gonzalez told the publication.

In order to adapt to the lost funding, operators plan to cut fall-run Chinook salmon smolt production by 50 percent this year to 2.25 million fish. Steelhead trout production will also be halved, with the facility producing just 215,000 fish.

With commercial salmon fishing in California closed for the third straight year, the state has relied on hatchery operations – as well as habitat restoration – to help the struggling stocks recover. According to Gonzalez, Nimbus provides between 7 percent and 30 percent of the regular ocean salmon harvest.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: California Governor Newsom signs bill phasing out gillnet fishing in state waters

October 15, 2025 — Gavin Newsom, the governor of the U.S. state of California, has signed a bill into law that ends the use of gillnets in state waters.

Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1056 into law on 13 October, phasing out the use of drift gillnets in California’s waters. The bill – sponsored by NGOs Oceana and the Resource Renewal Institute – limits the ability of remaining fishers with gillnet permits to transfer them, phasing out the fishery as they retire.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Early signs point to salmon returning one year after Klamath dam removal

October 13, 2025 — Researchers said there are promising signs for salmon populations in the Lower Klamath River — including the emergence of “football”-shaped fish — in the wake of the nation’s largest-ever dam removal.

Environmentalists and tribal officials Thursday marked one year since the elimination of four dams along the river in Northern California and southern Oregon.

While it remains too early to evaluate whether fish populations — which have a three-year life cycle — are rebounding, researchers said salmon and other species are being recorded swimming in portions of the river that have been blocked for more than a century.

Read the full article at E&E News

CALIFORNIA: 50th annual Zeke Grader forum addresses California fisheries crisis

October 7, 2025 — Lawmakers, tribal representatives and state officials gathered on October 1, in Sacramento for the 50th Annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum, focusing on the mounting difficulties facing California’s salmon and Dungeness crab fisheries.

Hosted by California Senator Mike McGuire and the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, the forum highlighted the economic and environmental pressures impacting coastal communities. Officials discussed how warming ocean temperatures, drought, and habitat degradation have contributed to repeated salmon season closures and delayed crab opening along the West Coast.

Read the full article at KRCR

CALIFORNIA: West Coast fisheries ‘incredibly challenged’: McGuire forum addresses Dungeness, salmon impacts

October 6, 2025 — Last week, the California State Senate’s Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture hosted its 50th annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum. Scientists and representatives from various state agencies, tribal government, industry and environmental groups met to discuss challenges facing kelp forests off our shores, the future of a later and later Dungeness crab season and a salmon fishery now in its third consecutive year of commercial fishing closure.

Committee Chair Senator Mike McGuire opened proceedings by noting the challenges the state’s fisheries are facing as well as some of the state’s redoubled efforts and funding, via Proposition 4 funding and other legislative commitments, to improve resiliency along the California coast and waterways.

“I think that we can all agree, fisheries on the West Coast, salmon and Dungeness crab both, … have been incredibly challenged over the past several years, and it seems for every step forward that we take, two steps are taken back,” McGuire said. “… We’ve had some wins, though. We had the first recreational salmon fishing season in California in three years. The challenge that we continue to see (is) no commercial salmon fishing for the third straight year, and that has had massive impacts on rural coastal communities, especially in Northern California …

“Protecting (and) preserving our state’s Fisheries and Aquaculture is vital. It’s vital to the long-term health of rural economies up and down this state, and it is also key to the social and cultural diversity we celebrate here in California, especially with tribal nations.”

Read the full article at The Fresno Bee

CALIFORNIA: Nordic Aquafarms silent on future of aquaculture facility

October 3, 2025 — The future of the company planning a massive aquaculture facility is up in the air.

This week, the Lost Coast Outpost published a story posing the question “Is the Nordic Aquafarms project dead?”

The company secured a 30-year lease agreement with the Humboldt Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation & Conservation District in 2019, and has been working to redevelop the Redwood Marine Terminal II site on the Samoa Peninsula into a $650 million state-of-the-art recirculating aquaculture facility since then.

But recently, Lost Coast Outpost noted, the company has gone silent, following the unexpected termination of a similar project in Maine earlier this year.

Read the full article at the Times Standard

Marine heatwave ‘blob’ returns in Pacific, rivaling past events in size and impact

September 26, 2025 — In 2013, scientists noticed a block of unusually warm water detected in the Pacific Ocean between the Gulf of Alaska and the Coast of Southern California. This was recognized by meteorologists as a basin-scale marine heatwave (MHW), often referred to as “the blob”. This water mass hung around from 2013-2016 before re-emerging again in July of 2019 (known as Blob 2.0) and lasting 20 months.

In May 2025, the blob reappeared.

Rachel Hager, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, said this new MHW has grown “approximately the same size as the contiguous U.S.” She added it now ranks among the top three largest MHWs ever recorded in the northeast Pacific Ocean since monitoring began in 1982.

Read the full article at KATU 2

California leads spike in whale entanglements last year, NOAA report says

September 25, 2025 —  The number of large whale entanglements in U.S. waters increased steeply in 2024, with California seeing the most of the incidents, a U.S. government report said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report last week documenting 95 large whale entanglements in 2024, compared to 64 in 2023 and well above the historical average of around 71 per year. The majority of the entanglements, 71%, happened off the coast of four states: Alaska, California, Hawaii and Massachusetts, the report said. Of those, 25% occurred off the California coast, primarily in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area.

The report said about half of the entanglements, mostly of humpback whales, were directly attributed to commercial or recreational fisheries. Whales become snagged in fishing gear used to catch lobster, crab, and other species, affecting their ability to swim, reproduce, and feed, and often causing death.

Entanglements and vessel strikes are two main causes of whale deaths, according to the NOAA. The agency says that since 2007, at least 922 humpback whales have been maimed or killed by long lines of rope fishermen use to pull up crab cages.

Read the full article at CBS News

NOAA identifies 21,000 acres suitable for commercial aquaculture development

September 25, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries has identified 21,000 acres of ocean off the coast of California and in the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of America by the Trump Administration, that it claims would be suitable for offshore aquaculture development.

The announcement follows up on an executive order issued by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term, which charged NOAA Fisheries with establishing 10 Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (AOA) by 2025. According to the order, AOAs would be sites predetermined by the government to be suitable for commercial aquaculture.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource