Saving Seafood

Are harp seals responsible for the stalled recovery of Atlantic cod?

December 2, 2025 — In June 2024, the Canadian government lifted the moratorium on northern cod fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador after 32 years. The decision was controversial because cod numbers had not recovered since they collapsed in the early 1990s.

The collapse of Atlantic cod stocks in Newfoundland and Labrador had a huge impact on the economic and social fabric of the province. The subsequent fishing moratorium in 1992 put nearly 30,000 people in the province out of work.

Several explanations have been put forward for the stalled cod recovery, including environmental conditions, historical overfishing and prey availability.

Another explanation has identified predation by harp seals as the reason cod numbers have remained low. However, given the severity of historical overfishing that occurred, Atlantic cod population growth may be impaired by a number of factors.

The Northwest Atlantic harp seal population was estimated at 4.4 million in 2024, the second-largest seal population in the world. Fishermen have long been concerned about the amount of fish that harp seals consume. However, a 2014 Fisheries and Oceans Canada study concluded that harp seals do not strongly impact the northern cod stock.

The concerns of fishermen about the impact of seals on fish stocks were heard by the Canadian government. In September 2023, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced funding for independent seal science. It was through this funding opportunity that I recruited postdoctoral fellow Pablo Vajas and MSc student Hannah West to dive deeper into the issue.

Read the full article at The Conversation

Newfoundland fishing union condemns creation of MPAs

October 29, 2025 — The Newfoundland and Labrador Fish, Food, and Allied Workers Union (FFAW) Inshore Council has unanimously condemned Canada’s use of marine protected areas (MPAs), refuges, national marine conservation areas, and other area restrictions that it says unfairly limit the fishing industry.

“We demand that Prime Minister Mark Carney, [Fisheries] Minister Joanne Thompson, and [Canadian Identity and Culture] Minister Steven Guilbeault immediately dismantle these baseless closures and abandon all plans for new ones. These policies are a deliberate betrayal of our fish harvesters, wrecking livelihoods while masquerading as conservation,” FFAW Vice President Jason Sullivan said in a release. “The federal government’s obsession with these closures is a disgrace, prioritizing hollow environmental optics over the survival of our communities.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Catch limits for scallops on Georges Bank reduced due to increase in predator population

October 28, 2025 — One of Nova Scotia’s most lucrative seafood species is being attacked by natural predators on one of the most famous fishing grounds.

What remains to be seen is whether it’s a short-term occurrence or a sign of things to come.

A recently published stock assessment by Fisheries and Oceans Canada for sea scallops in Scallop Fishing Area (SFA) 27A on Georges Bank notes major changes in the amount of biomass and natural mortality rates. The changes were dramatic enough that DFO reduced the total allowable catch last December.

Fully recruited biomass decreased to 13,570 tonnes in 2024 from 31,095 tonnes in 2023 after fluctuating “within the healthy zone since the 2000s,” the science advisory report said. Fully recruited refers to commercial-size scallops.

Recruit biomass — the total mass of new scallops in the population — dropped by 72 per cent from 2023 to 2024.

The report said the “significant interannual changes” in stock condition for the SFA are likely driven by environmental variability.

“Research vessel survey data from Canada and the United States suggest that predator abundance, notably sea stars and crabs, has increased within the areas of known scallop distribution. Aggregations of predators in areas of high scallop density contribute to increases in natural mortality.”

Read the full article at CBC News

Trump says trade negotiations with Canada terminated in response to television advertisement

October 24, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump announced he is terminating all trade negotiations with Canada, the U.S.’s largest seafood trading partner, in response to a television advertisement featuring a quote from former President Ronald Reagan.

Trump, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, said he was terminating the trade negotiations and that the Ronald Reagan Foundation “announced that Canada fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.” The foundation had posted an update online saying it was “reviewing its legal options” on the advertisement, which directly quotes a real address by Reagan publicly available online.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Chinook salmon immune systems impacted by acute heat

October 16, 2025 — Fisheries researchers have concluded that Chinook salmon in shallow streams in western Canada will be impacted in the coming years by the frequency, duration, and intensity of heatwaves.

When salmonids encounter high water temperatures, it may increase their susceptibility to infectious disease, according to the research published by the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, and Yellow Island Aquaculture Ltd. on Quadra Island, British Columbia, in the online journal Elsevier.

Their research has found that the disproportionate changes in temperature for three consecutive days or longer have risen in recent years and are expected to continue increasing globally in the coming decades.

Heatwaves result in several downstream consequences, including increased water temperatures in shallow streams and rivers, and there is a strong positive correlation between daily water and air temperature. Shallow rivers are particularly susceptible to temperature fluctuations. For every 1 °C increase in air temperature, stream temperature correspondingly rises approximately 0.4–0.6°C.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Record Prices and Tariff Pressures Challenge the US Scallop Complex

September 22, 2025 — The scallop market in the US has faced continued challenges in 2025. Low domestic landings continue providing upward pricing pressure, while potentially constrained availability from Canada adds to tight North American supply. A similar scenario played out in 2024, when many market participants turned to Japanese product as a quality substitute for domestic shortfalls.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Carney administration launches Buy Canada program aimed at supporting sectors hard hit by US trade policy

September 9, 2025 — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a set of strategic measures aimed at responding to the impacts of U.S. trade policy, and the nation’s seafood industry appears likely to benefit. 

“We cannot control what other nations do,” Carney said in a press release about the Buy Canada policy package he announced on 5 September. “We can control what we give ourselves – what we build for ourselves.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US, Canadian retailers slash prices to entice anxious shoppers

August 26, 2025 — Retailers in both the U.S. and Canada have implemented price drops in order to entice shoppers, many of whom are seeking value wherever they can find it amid continued global trade uncertainty.

Bentonville, Arkansas, U.S.A.-based retail giant Walmart rolled back prices on 7,400 items in the second quarter of its 2026 fiscal year, which is 2,000 more than the same period last year, per Supermarket News.

Read the full article at the SeafoodSource

ALASKA: As inflation continues to rise, some fisheries turn to artificial intelligence to lower costs

August 18, 2025 — New technology is coming to Alaskan fisheries thanks to a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The grant was to the Alaska’s Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) and the $485,000 will be used to develop technology to incorporate artificial intelligence into the existing electronic monitoring (EM) program.

ALFA is partnering with the Canadian company Archipelago Marine Research to enhance its FishVue AI tool, training it for Alaskan sablefish and halibut fixed gear fisheries. This move is expected to help increase efficiency and lower costs for the fishermen.

“If you participate in federal fisheries, your vessel is over 40 feet, you’re required to have either an onboard observer or an electronic monitoring, an EM camera system, on your vessel for a percentage of your trips that get monitored and that’s federal regulation,” ALFA policy coordinator Lauren Howard explained.

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Bolder efforts needed to save Northwest’s endangered orcas, report finds

July 14, 2025 — Efforts to save the Northwest’s endangered orcas are not working on either side of the U.S.-Canada border, according to an international panel of scientists.

In a new report, the panel of 31 researchers call for bolder measures to bring the endangered whales back from the brink of extinction.

The whale experts say these orcas urgently need comprehensive action for quiet, clean, salmon-rich waters.

“It’s a declining population, and it’s a population that we predict will be declining for a generation or two, and then that decline will accelerate rapidly towards extinction if we don’t turn this around quickly,” said Rob Williams, chief scientist with the nonprofit Oceans Initiative in Seattle and one of the report’s coauthors.

The salmon-eating orcas, known as southern resident killer whales, were declared an endangered species in Canada in 2001 and in the United States in 2005.

Read the full article at KUOW