Saving Seafood

MARYLAND: Maryland requests disaster declaration for Chesapeake oyster fishery

March 2, 2026 — Maryland requested a federal disaster declaration for the Chesapeake Bay oyster fishery Friday, after a perfect storm of bad weather and headline-grabbing environmental incidents depressed the market.

It’s not that there aren’t enough oysters, state officials say, but that the falling prices are hammering the industry.

In December, the Centers for Disease Control linked a multistate salmonella outbreak to eating raw oysters. Then, January brought a massive snowstorm and a prolonged cold snap, freezing the Chesapeake and keeping watermen off their boats.

That same month, a massive sewage pipe collapsed on the Potomac River, spilling millions of gallons of sewage — and damaging the perception of oysters further, even though testing has shown bacteria within safe levels at a state oyster harvesting area.

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

MARYLAND: Maryland oyster season collapse prompts calls for federal disaster aid

February 9, 2026 — Maryland officials are asking for federal help amid what they describe as one of the worst oyster seasons in state history, a collapse they say threatens both watermen and a cornerstone of the Chesapeake Bay economy.

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., this week asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to declare an economic fishery disaster under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Such a designation can unlock emergency federal assistance for fisheries harmed by natural or market conditions.

“Severe weather this year, combined with shrinking market access and increased competition, left many crews effectively tied to the dock, with watermen able to fish for just one or two days all season,” Harris said in a statement. He said immediate relief is needed to offset financial losses.

Eastern Shore lawmakers echoed the comments from Harris, saying a combination of factors — prolonged freezing weather, weak demand and growing competition from out-of-state oysters — devastated the winter harvest. State Sen. Johnny Mautz, R-Middle Shore, said the normal Thanksgiving-to-Christmas peak selling period largely vanished.

“That is prime time oyster sales. This year, it just did not exist,” Mautz said. “There has not been a demand to buy Maryland oysters.”

Read the full article at the Baltimore Sun

MARYLAND: Maryland oyster hatchery faces federal funding cut

January 29, 2026 — In a potentially serious blow to oyster restoration efforts in Maryland, the Trump administration has slashed federal funding that supports the operation of the state-run oyster hatchery on the Eastern Shore.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is cutting nearly in half the $740,000 grant it has provided annually for spawning and rearing oysters at the Horn Point laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES).

The cut comes on the heels of the successful conclusion of a more than decade-long campaign to restore oysters in 10 Chesapeake Bay tributaries in Maryland and Virginia — an effort the state-federal Chesapeake Bay Program is now looking to expand. It also comes as Congress, in a rare show of bipartisanship, has increased rather than cut federal funding for Bay oyster restoration efforts.

The Horn Point hatchery, one of the largest on the East Coast, has played a central role in the restoration of oyster reefs in Maryland’s five tributaries. Its annual output of oyster larvae since 2020 has ranged from 400 million to nearly 2 billion.

The hatchery sells some of those larvae to private oyster farmers, but three-quarters of the newly spawned bivalves are set or attached to oyster shells and planted on the bottom of Bay tributaries targeted by the state for restoration.

Read the full article at the Bay Journal

Congress approves more Bay funding than White House sought

January 20, 2026 — Rebuffing deep spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration, Congress has approved more funding for Chesapeake Bay cleanup and conservation than the White House requested — including boosts for restoring oysters, dealing with invasive blue catfish and addressing whether menhaden, an important forage fish in the Bay, are being overfished.

By a vote of 82-15, the U.S. Senate gave overwhelming, bipartisan approval Thursday to a trio of spending bills that included funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Commerce, Justice, Energy and Interior departments through the end of September. With the House having passed the package on Jan. 8, the measures now go to the White House for President Trump’s signature.

The bills do reduce overall spending at the affected agencies but by far less than proposed by the White House Office of Management and Budget. And lawmakers actually increased spending on some science-related programs and projects.

Notably, Congress approved record-high funding of $93 million for EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program, the federal-state partnership that coordinates pollution reduction and habitat restoration efforts in the estuary and its rivers and streams.

Read the full article at Bay Journal

Changes are coming to the Chesapeake Bay, thanks to climate change

December 31, 2025 — Warming temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are changing the Chesapeake Bay.

New kinds of fish are venturing to the bay and long-established species face challenges as their bodies respond to warmer temperatures and changing salinity — salt and ion levels — in bay waters, recent studies show.

“We know climate is warming, and so are the waters of the bay, and we’ve seen this in our own time,” said Mary C. Fabrizio, a professor of natural resources at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

“We need to look at all the processes in the body of the fish that are affected by temperature, things like growth, things like reproduction and feeding behaviors.” She said these include: “When do fish migrate up river to spawn, or when do fish return to the bay to feed? And how do fish use the bay as a nursery area?”

Read the full article at Daily Press

Chesapeake Bay region leaders approve revised agreement, commit to cleanup through 2040

December 4, 2025 — State and federal leaders from around the Chesapeake Bay have given the final stamp of approval to an agreement that sets the tone for the next 15 years of cleaning up the nation’s largest estuary.

The Chesapeake Executive Council, which directs the massive restoration effort, met in Baltimore Tuesday to celebrate the latest iteration of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.

“It is not just a renewal of commitment, but it is a redoubling of our efforts to make progress that is not only aspirational, but progress that is fast,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said at the meeting, his last as a member of the council. “The huge effort that we have made over many years is the foundation.”

Virginia and other states in the region signed onto the most recent agreement in 2014. It set benchmarks for participants to voluntarily achieve by 2025, such as cutting pollution and boosting seagrass and crab populations. Officials failed to meet about a third of the targets by this year’s deadline.

Read the full article at VPM

Striped Bass are Struggling; UMass Amherst Biologists Know How to Help

December 2, 2025 — While there are only four official seasons in the year, anglers in the Northeast recognize a fifth: striper season, the months from May to November when striped bass, which can grow up to 100 pounds and are renowned for their fight once hooked, migrate along the coastal waters between the Chesapeake and Canadian Maritimes within range of thousands of fishing lures. But the fishery, which generated approximately $13 billion in economic activity along the Eastern seaboard in 2016, is crashing, despite the fact that the vast majority of bass caught by recreational anglers are released back into the ocean.

A pair of recent papers, led by biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published in Fisheries Research and Marine and Coastal Fisheries, sought to comprehensively pinpoint which catch-and-release fishing practices pose a considerable risk to striped bass, and to show that there’s a mismatch between what anglers know about catch-and-release best practices and how this knowledge translates into action once on the water.

Read the full article at UMass Amherst

Shark research effort still has bite after 50 years

November 14, 2025 –Aboard this 65-foot vessel, nothing much happens most of the time. The VHF marine radio crackles with mundane chatter. The Atlantic Ocean ebbs and swells. Below deck, crew members resort to playing Uno.

Then, everything happens all at once.

After four hours of “soaking” in ocean currents, the baited fishhooks are ready to be reeled in. A huge winch squeals to life, winding in the mile-long fishing line. Just below the surface of the water, a ghostly silhouette flickers into view.

It has arrived — the day’s first shark.

“Up!” several voices call in unison, an instruction to raise the hammock-like gurney six or seven feet to the boat’s railing. The sandbar shark nearly thrashes free, but two gloved hands show up just in time to gently, but firmly, coax the giant fish to stay put.

“That was a very alive one,” said Samuel Ruth, a few minutes after returning the shark into the waters where the ocean mingles with the Chesapeake Bay.

his is catch-and-release with a higher purpose. During the minute or two that the shark is out of the water, Ruth and his colleagues race to record vital information — its sex, length and weight (if it’s small enough to fit on the scale). The whirlwind of activity also includes collecting a DNA sample, affixing an ID tag below its dorsal fin and snapping photos to aid in future identification.

For more than five decades, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s shark research group has worked to pull back the veil on these mysterious creatures. Their research has helped protect sharks from overfishing, documented how they respond to climate change and shed light on their not infrequent appearances in the Chesapeake Bay.

The work is crucial for understanding sharks themselves as well as the marine ecosystems they inhabit, said Jameson Gregg, a senior marine scientist at VIMS.

Read the full article at the Bay Journal

Stakeholders nearing update on Chesapeake Bay Agreement with multiple goals for fisheries

November 6, 2025 — Federal and state stakeholders are getting close on an update to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement – a voluntary accord that sets goals for conservation and clean water – laying out desired outcomes for some of the region’s fisheries.

First established in 1983, signatories to the agreement include the governments of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New York, and the District of Columbia, along with the Chesapeake Bay Commission and federal agencies.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ASMFC Atlantic Striped Bass Board Approves Addendum III Without Reductions in Fishery Removals New Work Group Planned to Address Long-Term Management and Stock Concerns

October 31, 2025 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board approved Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Atlantic Striped Bass. The Addendum modifies requirements for commercial tagging programs, implements a standard method of measuring total length for size limit regulations, and allows Maryland to change its Chesapeake Bay recreational season baseline if the state so chooses.

The Board decided to not move forward with the proposed 12% reduction in fishery removals after lengthy deliberation. The Board reviewed the preliminary estimates of 2025 recreational catch through June, which were lower than anticipated and suggested that the projections may have underestimated the probability of rebuilding by 2029 and overestimated the reductions necessary to rebuild. The Board noted that the over 4,000 public comments they received on the draft addendum were sharply divided on the issue, as was the Board itself. Ultimately, the Board maintained current recreational measures and commercial quotas, noting the severe economic consequences of the proposed reduction, the low fishing mortality rate in 2024, and preliminary indications of lower catch in 2025. However, the Board continued to express concern about the seven consecutive years of low recruitment in Chesapeake Bay and the impact on the stock as those weak year-classes become the majority of the spawning stock biomass after 2029. To address this, the Board approved the establishment of a Work Group to consider these upcoming stock and management challenges beyond 2029. The Board will further discuss the specific tasks and timing of this Work Group at subsequent Board meetings. 
 
For commercial tagging, the Addendum requires states to tag commercially harvested fish by the first point of landing. Previously, states could choose the point of tagging, including tagging at the point of sale. This change to when tagging occurs addresses concerns that waiting to tag fish until the point of sale could increase the risk of illegal harvest. The three states that will need to switch their tagging program from point of sale to point of landing have until the end of 2028 to make that change due to the extensive administrative and programmatic transition needed.
 


For measuring total length, the Addendum specifies that when measuring total length of a striped bass it must be a straight-line measurement with upper and lower fork of the tail squeezed together. This definition applies to both sectors. This new definition addresses concerns that the previous lack of a standard definition was potentially undermining the intended conservation, consistency, and enforceability of the coastwide size limits, especially for narrow slot limits. States that do not have the new definition in place already have until January 1, 2027 to make changes to their state regulations.
 
For Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay recreational fishery, the Board approved Maryland’s ability to change its recreational season baseline (i.e., the timing, type, and duration of striped bass closures throughout the year) if the state so chooses. Maryland is considering changing its season baseline to simplify its Chesapeake Bay regulations as well as re-align access based on stakeholder input and release mortality rates. The new baseline is estimated to be net neutral calculated to maintain the same level of removals as compared to 2024. Maryland will notify the Board of its decision by December 31, 2025 in its state implementation plan.
 
Addendum III will be available in November on the Commission website athttps://asmfc.org/species/atlantic-striped-bass/ under News and Resources. For more information, please contact Emilie Franke, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at efranke@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.