Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Ex-vessel value of 2025 Bristol Bay salmon harvest rated at $215.3 M

September 30, 2025 — Bristol Bay sockeye salmon harvests of 41.5 million fish for 2025 exceeded the forecast by 18 percent, and with catches of Chinook, chum, and coho salmon, put the season’s exvessel harvest value at $215.3 million.

That total was 7 percent above the 20-year average of $200.7 million, and those prices may not include incentives for icing, bleeding, floating, or production bonuses, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said in the annual Bristol Bay season summary released on Sept. 25.

Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association officials, who are already planning their 2026 marketing campaign, said that the average weight of the drift gillnet caught red salmon was 5.1 pounds.

The overall nationwide demand for all Alaska salmon has been upbeat.

Read the full article at the the National Fisherman

Chinook salmon in the Skagit River delta are rebounding, study finds

September 29, 2025 — A new study has found that restoration in the Skagit River delta has successfully affected its population of Chinook salmon.

Puget Sound Chinook are federally listed as endangered. It’s a species that is limited by habitat, particularly by a lack of rearing areas for juveniles.

Many restoration projects both large and small have been undertaken throughout the delta in the past few decades, totaling an area of about 630 acres. They have met with varying degrees of success. Those include restoration in areas such as Fir Island Farms, Milltown and Wiley Slough.

Read the full article at The Seattle Times

Salmon and steelhead extinction threshold science, and the ocean fish of northeast Oregon

August 21, 2025 — The Nez Perce Tribe and its collaborators will try to eke out a few more years’ survival for Tucannon River Chinook.

“But,” Jay Hesse says, “we also had to ask: What about all the other populations? So in 2021, we started modeling quasi-extinction for all the Snake River spring/summer Chinook and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act. The results are giving us a better picture of real conditions, and a stronger case for the urgency of action.”

Mr. Hesse is the director of Biological Services for the Nez Perce Department of Fisheries Resources Management.

Some years ago, federal scientists at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries developed the “quasi-extinction threshold,” which the NOAA uses in planning.

For Snake River Chinook salmon and steelhead, the threshold is fewer than 50 adult fish in a population returning from the ocean for four consecutive years. Below that floor, the population’s continued existence can no longer be scientifically assumed or predicted. It is an emergency signal, flashing red and near black.

The Nez Perce Tribe is applying this science to management of populations below or near the extinction threshold, as well as to public education and long-term science.

Nez Perce Fisheries provided me two maps from its upcoming extinction threshold report for Snake River spring/summer Chinook, and steelhead, updated through 2024 fish returns. These maps show some of the findings, but much else in it will deserve attention.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Alaska salmon harvest tops to 129 million fish

August 15, 2025 — Alaska’s 2025 commercial salmon harvest reached over 129 million fish through Aug. 12, with sockeye, keta and coho catches appearing on pace to reach total annual projections.

Those projected 2025 harvests would add up to 214.6 million salmon, including over 138 million pink, 52.9 million sockeye, 20.8 million keta, 2.3 million coho and 144,000 kings.

Data compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game showed the statewide pink harvest at 62.3 million fish, followed by 51.3 million sockeyes, 14.5 million chum, 888,000 coho and 150,000 king salmon.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Indigenous leaders, scientists, and policy makers call for bold actions to address Yukon River salmon crisis

August 5, 2025 — Tribes should be allowed to harvest the same number of Yukon River chinook salmon that trawlers scoop up in the Bering Sea as bycatch, and an independent review is needed to better manage the salmon crisis on Alaska’s longest river. These are just two of the recommendations outlined in a recent policy brief that looks at near-term strategies for addressing the crisis on the Yukon.

Doug DeMaster, a retired biologist who spent nearly two decades with the top federal fisheries agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), co-authored the brief published in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research (AAAR).

“What we tried to do in this brief is put together a document that identifies what’s needed, what’s wanted, and tries to do it in a way that’s easily amenable to Congress, and politicians, and both state and federal agencies,” DeMaster said.

The two-page document was assembled by a mix of tribal leaders, scientists, and policy makers. It boils down potential factors driving crashes for both chinook and chum salmon on the Yukon River. Among them: bycatch and ecosystem changes in the Bering Sea driven by the pollock fishery, warmer water temperatures, competition with hatchery salmon, the Area M intercept fishery, and increasing rates of parasitic infection in Yukon River chinook.

Read the full article at KYUK

CALIFORNIA: First salmon in nearly 100 years found in Northern California river

July 30, 2025 — An endangered species has returned to its Northern California river habitat for the first time in almost a century, wildlife officials said.

Winter-run chinook salmon — one of nine species considered to be most at risk of extinction by NOAA — have been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1994. But new concerns for the species came to light after California’s historic statewide drought between 2012 and 2016, when the fish all but vanished from the McCloud River, which flows through Siskiyou and Shasta counties.

The construction of Shasta Dam above the 77-mile-long waterway had already been causing problems for the species since the late 1930s, cutting them off from the mountain streams kept cool by melting snow where they like to spawn. But when the dam lost its own cold water pool during the drought, increasing water temperatures and reduced oxygen rates led to the deaths of 95 to 98% of eggs and recently hatched salmon incubating in their nests, according to NOAA.

So it came as a surprise when, earlier this month, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed reports of adult Chinook salmon in the river near Ash Camp. Officials saw one female exhibiting spawning behavior and “guarding her nest,” while multiple smaller males were observed nearby, competing to spawn themselves, the agency wrote of the July 15 sighting.

Read the full article at KCRA

OREGON: Oregon lawmakers urge Trump admin to unlock funds for ‘catastrophic’ fishery disaster

July 14, 2025 — A group of Democratic Oregon lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to release $7 million in authorized funding meant to address Oregon’s “catastrophic” fishery disaster.

In a June 11 letter, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, lawmakers urged Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to review and approve a spending plan that’s been resubmitted by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Lawmakers said the funding is “critical,” to help Oregon’s ocean fishermen recoup lost funds amid declining salmon populations after a fishery disaster was declared for Oregon Chinook salmon for 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Read the full article at KOIN

NOAA Fisheries weighing ESA protection for Chinook salmon

July 1, 2025 — The National Marine Fisheries Service, or NOAA Fisheries, will determine whether spring-run Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act beginning in the fall.

Under a stipulated settlement agreement filed June 26 in U.S. District Court’s Portland division, the agency has until Nov. 3 to determine whether listing Oregon and California coastal salmon as threatened or endangered is warranted, and Jan. 2 for Washington coastal salmon.

“We are unable to comment on matters of litigation,” NOAA Fisheries spokesman James Miller told the Capital Press.

Read the full article at Capital Press

US court sets deadline for NOAA to make ESA decisions on Chinook salmon

July 1, 2025 — Following a lawsuit filed by a coalition of conservation groups, a U.S. district court has set deadlines for NOAA Fisheries to determine whether some Chinook salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest should be protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

NOAA Fisheries must now make a decision on Oregon Coast and Southern Oregon/Northern California coastal Chinook by 3 November 2025 and on Washington coast spring-run Chinook by 2 January 2026.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Vitamin deficiency is killing salmon in California

July 1, 2025 –A vitamin deficiency linked to an enzyme found in anchovies that breaks down Vitamin B1, or thiamine, is threatening the survival of Chinook salmon in California and far beyond.

“An interesting piece of the puzzle is that we don’t have evidence for diminished sources of thiamine in the ocean food web,” said Nathan Mantua, a research scientist with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, Calif. “Instead, we have evidence that anchovy carry an enzyme called thiaminase that destroys thiamine in the predator’s stomach when the anchovy is digested.”

Mantua is part of the team of 37 coauthors of a new research paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America that links Vitamin B1 deficiency to the anchovy-dominated diet that likely resulted in the death of nearly half of California’s wild winter-run Central Valley Chinook salmon fry in 2020-2021.

“It has been a fascinating five years of research working with an entirely new group of people for me in our ongoing investigations into thiamine deficiency in California’s salmon,” said Mantua.

The issue came to their attention just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in January of 2020, so they had to develop a research program at a time when there were lots of big changes happening to the way they worked in the office, on the ocean, and in rivers. In spite of all those hurdles, the group came together to rapidly develop a research network that worked together really well, he said.

A research summary released by NOAA Fisheries on June 25 notes that thiamine deficiency is linked to large-scale shifts in the ocean ecosystem, shifts that changed the prey adult salmon consume before returning to West Coast rivers to spawn. Longtime loss of habitat and water has already weakened many California salmon populations, and further declines from thiamine deficiency or other impacts may lead to their extinction, the report said.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman