Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: California policymakers say they’re undeterred by Trump opposition to offshore wind

February 24, 2025 — Despite resistance from the Trump White House, California government officials and administrators at the state’s ports say they are still going full-speed ahead on offshore wind projects.

“Now more than ever, California needs to be the hand around that candle of hope and keep the momentum going” for the state to reach its ambitious wind energy goals, David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission, said at a symposium Friday in Long Beach.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state policymakers expect offshore wind to generate as much as 5 gigawatts of power by 2030 and 25 gigawatts by 2045. For perspective, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in San Luis Obispo produces 2.2 gigawatts of capacity, which accounts for about 9% of the state’s power mix each year.

Five companies collectively bid $751.1 million in December 2022 to win the leases to build wind farms off the coasts of Morro Bay in Central California and Humboldt Bay in Northern California. When completed, each project that covers tens of thousands of acres will be located at least 20 miles from the mainland, in federal waters.

But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued a review of leasing and permitting practices for all wind energy projects in the U.S. and called for a temporary withdrawal of all areas on the outer Continental Shelf from offshore wind leasing.

“We acknowledge new uncertainties in federal policies and we have important work ahead of us to understand where that federal policy is actually headed and what the implications are for California,” said Jana Ganion, Newsom’s senior adviser for offshore wind.

Read the full article at The San Diego Union-Tribune

CALIFORNIA: A ‘perfect storm’ of environmental and political issues is driving Santa Cruz fishers out of the water

February 20, 2025 — Would Santa Cruz still be Santa Cruz without a fishing industry? After nine rocky years of delayed, shortened and outright canceled fishing seasons, the coastal community could soon have to face a cultural reckoning as the number of commercial fishing boats active in the Santa Cruz Harbor dwindles to fewer than 20.

For generations, fishers along California’s Central Coast have relied on two primary catches to make their living: Dungeness crab in the winter and Chinook salmon in the summer.

But over the past nine years, this traditional rhythm has been disrupted by a cascade of environmental challenges. Migrating whales are lingering in crabbing areas longer, contributing to delayed seasons and reduced catch limits, while droughts and fluctuating river levels have decimated salmon populations.

The impact on Santa Cruz County’s commercial fishers has been profound. The state’s salmon fishery has been closed since 2023, with little sign of recovery, while the crab season has been shortened and restricted for the past six years.

Read the full article at Lookout Santa Cruz

Conservationists sue feds to protect Pacific Northwest salmon populations

February 19, 2025 — Conservation groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday morning against the National Marine Fisheries Service for missing its deadline to determine if spring-run Chinook salmon in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California warranted protection under the Endangered Species Act. The organizations behind the lawsuit seek a court order to compel the Fisheries Service to issue a finding within a suitable time frame.

“These iconic fish are at risk of disappearing from our coastal rivers forever if the Service doesn’t act quickly,” Jeremiah Scanlan, a legal fellow at the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “Spring-run Chinook salmon badly need protections, but instead, the agency has taken the lazy river approach and drifted past its own deadlines.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, Native Fish Society, Umpqua Watersheds, and Pacific Rivers claim the Fisheries Service violated federal law when it failed to issue a timely finding within 12 months of their petition asking for three Chinook salmon populations to be listed as “threatened” or “endangered” — the Oregon Coast Chinook salmon, the Southern Oregon and Northern California Coastal Chinook salmon, and the Washington Coast spring-run Chinook salmon.

“The agency’s failure to meet the deadlines delays crucial, lifesaving protections for these species, increasing their risk of extinction,” the groups said in their lawsuit.

Chinook salmon, also known as “king salmon,” are the largest of all Pacific salmon species. Although the fish were once abundant in the river basins of the Pacific Northwest, their populations have declined sharply in recent years and are now only a fraction of their historical size.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

CALIFORNIA: California loves Dungeness crab. But concerns over whale safety put industry in peril

February 10, 2025 — It was a calm January morning, the waters off Bodega Bay unusually smooth, but crab fisherman Dick Ogg couldn’t shake a grim feeling that the day wouldn’t go his way.

The Dungeness crab season had opened just a few weeks earlier — two months behind schedule — and was off to a slow start. “We’re working very hard to basically get nothing,” said Ogg.

The anemic hauls so early in the season mark the latest setback for California’s commercial Dungeness crab fishery, a roughly $45-million-a-year industry that delivers one of the state’s most iconic culinary delights.

The industry’s future has been complicated by another celebrated sea creature: Each year, a number of humpback whales migrating through California’s waters to and from tropical breeding grounds get entangled in commercial crab fishing gear, encounters that often end in mutilation or death. State regulators are intent on lowering the chances of whales coming into contact with the gear.

There’s reason to be concerned.

Since 1970, when the federal government listed humpback whales as “endangered” after they were hunted to near extinction, the population has made a fragile comeback. Whales along the West Coast have recovered at an estimated annual rate of 8.2% since the 1980s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with more than 4,500 humpback whales now feeding off California’s coast.

Read the full article at LA Times

WASHINGTON: Coastal Dungeness crab season kicks off after months of testing

February 7, 2025 — The state’s coastal commercial Dungeness crab season is underway, following months of test fishing and data gathering by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

This year’s season opened Jan. 15 from Klipsan Beach on the Long Beach Peninsula south to Cape Falcon, Ore., including the Columbia River and Willapa Bay, and will start Feb. 11 from Klipsan Beach north to the U.S.-Canada border, including Grays Harbor, according to a news release from WDFW.

The Washington, Oregon and California fish and wildlife departments decide season openers each year as part of a tri-state agreement signed in the 1990s to cooperatively manage the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery. Per the agreement, the season can open as early as Dec. 1, but opening dates vary and are based on test fishing to determine crab condition.

Over the fall and early winter, WDFW biologists and scientific technicians collected and measured crabs aboard commercial fishing vessels the Department contracts with for test fishing. They also observed seafood processing plants as workers picked out and packed crab meat.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: The $50 million question: Can California’s Dungeness crab fishery coexist with whale conservation efforts?

February 4, 2025 — At 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 4, commercial fisherman Barry Day is 10 miles off the coast of Half Moon Bay, watching the clock. One minute to go until the start of Dungeness crab season.

In the pitch black sea, Day’s radiant orange buoys bob with the promise of a payday. In total, he has set out 250 crab traps. Every buoy is attached to a thin rope that stretches 200 feet down to a cylindrical, metal-and-wire pot on the ocean floor. Day spent the previous month readying the pots: inspecting every piece of wire, splicing and joining ropes, repairing rubber wrappings, painting buoys.

Each trap costs around $300 all accounted for — $75,000 of gear now at the bottom of the ocean. Insurance for his boat and two deckhands is another $30,000. Then there’s the cost of slip space at the harbor. Thirty percent of sales goes to his crew. These are the numbers crawling in the back of his mind as the seconds tick by.

Read the full article at Palo Alto Online

CALIFORNIA: California Invests $15 Million On Salmon, Trout Habitat Resiliency

January 31, 2025 — California is investing $15 million to offset climate change threats to salmon and steelhead trout in river and stream habitats through projects that improve watersheds such as adding wood and plants.

In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries determined after a five-year review of recovery efforts that four salmon and steelhead species of fish in northern California and southern Oregon should continue to be designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full article at Forbes

Researchers assess damage done to marine life by California wildfires

January 27, 2025 — Heavy smoke, ash and debris from Southern California’s raging wildfires blowing and drifting far offshore are creating a toxic threat to marine life, scientists are warning.

Crew members aboard a NOAA research vessel reported conditions ranging from yellow-colored skies as far as 100 miles offshore to impenetrable smoke that required deck workers to don masks and goggles.

NOAA’s Noelle Bowlin, director of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program, who has been in daily contact with the vessel, said crew members reported “giant pieces of confetti everywhere” on the ocean surface and white-colored plankton nets used for research turning “completely black and coated in tons of soot and ash and burned material.”

Read the full article at E&E News

Seafood companies rally to help fire-affected California communities

January 22, 2025 — As wildfires continue to affect communities around Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., and as new ones have broken out to the south in San Diego, several seafood companies are rallying to help out by donating food and supplies.

Santa Monica Seafood, the largest seafood wholesaler in the area, is donating lobsters to Bracken’s Kitchen, a charitable food organization, so it can provide Lobster Mac & Cheese meals to those in need, according to President and CEO Roger O’Brien.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource