Saving Seafood

‘A ghost town’: How Bodega Bay is adapting to the ailing seafood industry

April 30, 2025 — From the living room window of their waterfront home, Carol and Tony Anello have watched the rise and fall of Bodega Bay. Traffic on Westshore Road flows past in waves, fishing boats pull into the docks and throngs of visitors line up at Spud Point Crab Co., their restaurant next door. Launched more than 20 years ago and known for its chowder and Dungeness crab rolls, the restaurant has helped make the Anellos beacons of the community.

It has also served as a life raft as they left the commercial fishing business.

“I had a premonition that the fishing industry was going down,” said Tony Anello, who fished commercially for salmon, crab and herring for 54 years before selling his boat Anabelle last year. “There are guys dropping out of this industry like flies, and I’m one of them.”

At Bodega Bay and other picturesque seaside villages along the California coast, the fishing economy is gradually sinking.

The latest blows came earlier this month: Commercial harvest of Chinook salmon was banned in California for the third consecutive year because of low populations, and the state’s Dungeness crab fishery has been severely restricted in an effort to protect humpback whales from entanglements. Sportfishing for salmon — a valuable industry and a beloved pastime — also was prohibited for two straight years, and will be severely cut back this year to what may amount to a single weekend in June in Northern California.

Read the full story at CalMatters

Federal subsistence king salmon fishery closes this season on Stikine River

April 28, 2025 — The Wrangell Ranger District will close the federal subsistence Chinook or king salmon fishery in the Stikine River between May 15 and June 30. It’s the ninth year in a row that the fishery has been closed.

According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the preseason forecast for king salmon in the Stikine is low, at 10,000 large kings – salmon greater than 28 inches in length.

Read the full story at KSTK

California’s commercial salmon fishery to remain closed for a third consecutive year

April 17, 2025 — The U.S. state of California’s commercial salmon fishery will remain closed for a third year in a row due mostly to low abundance fall Chinook runs in both the Klamath River and Sacramento River.

“A third year without fishing is a serious blow to California’s commercial salmon fleet,” Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association President George Bradshaw said in a statement. “We were optimistic about a return to salmon fishing for California’s fleet, but the reality is the low abundance and return estimates will not provide the economic impact we need. The risk of fishing this depleted population is simply not worth the reward.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

OREGON: Oregon lawmakers urge Trump administration to declare fishery disaster

April 16, 2025 — A group of Oregon Democratic lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to declare a fishery disaster in the state after a drop in the salmon population.

In an April 11 letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the lawmakers asked the administration to approve Governor Tina Kotek’s disaster declaration request after Oregon’s troll salmon fishery struggled from the worsening effects of climate change in 2024 — from increased drought to shifting ocean conditions and to other impacts leading to poor salmon returns.

Struggling fisheries pose an economic and cultural threat to Oregon, the lawmakers said, noting the state’s commercial fishing industry garners more than $640 million in economic activity every year.

Read the full article at KOIN

Commercial salmon fishing in California will be closed for a third year in a row

April 16, 2025 — The 2025 commercial salmon fishing season in California will be closed for an unprecedented third year running, and sportfishing will be restricted to only a few days due to dwindling numbers of fish, fishing regulators voted Tuesday.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages West Coast fisheries, warned earlier this year there would be limited salmon fishing this year in California, if at all, because of a predicted low number of fall-run Chinook salmon, often known as king salmon, in the Sacramento River.

“This closed commercial and token recreational fishing season is a human tragedy, as well as an economic and environmental disaster,” Scott Artis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association, said in a statement.

Salmon fishing is wildly popular in California but has been off limits for the past two years to commercial and recreational fishing due to dwindling stocks. People who commercially fish blame the issue on a years-earlier drought that walloped waterways, as well as state and federal water management policies they say have made it tough for the species to thrive.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska sport fishery sees single-fish limits for king salmon

April 7, 2025 — The amount of Chinook (king) salmon allocated under the Pacific Salmon Treaty is much lower this year in Southeast Alaska —almost 40 percent lower than last year— and that’s affecting all user groups.

The treaty is an agreement between the U.S. and Canada, ensuring both countries get some fish. Southeast’s sport fishing allocation (the amount of fish the group is allowed to take) is 27,700 wild king salmon — a slice out of the region’s almost 131,000-fish pie.

Patrick Fowler, regional fisheries management coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that overall, under the significantly lower treaty allocation, everyone’s going to fish less.

“The Board of Fish has given us the allocation plan for how big of a slice of the pie for each fishery,” he explained. “But because the base of the whole pie wasn’t as big, everyone’s slice is smaller.”

Fish and Game expects resident anglers to harvest about 10,000 fish, which leaves about 17,000 fish for nonresidents this year.

Read the full article at KFSK

A single dry winter decimated California’s salmon and trout populations

April 4, 2025 — A single severely dry winter temporarily, but dramatically, altered the ranges of three fishes — Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead trout — in California’s northern waterways.

In a new study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists found that the unusually dry winter of 2013-2014 caused some salmon and steelhead to temporarily disappear from individual tributaries and even entire watersheds along the northern California coast.

“California is at the southern end of the range for several species of salmon and trout, and because of a whole host of impacts, from colonization and engineered control of western rivers to climate change, these populations have been decimated,” said study lead author Stephanie Carlson, the A.S. Leopold Chair in Wildlife Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Our findings provide a glimpse into how an individual extreme event can trigger the widespread and sudden collapse of multiple populations and species and potentially result in longer term range shifts.”

During California’s historic multi-year drought of 2012-2016, the 2013-2014 winter was remarkable for having both very little rain and an extremely late start to the rainy season. By the time the first large rainstorms arrived in late January and early February 2014, many streams and rivers in Northern California were very low, and in some, the mouths had dried up completely, preventing salmon and steelhead from completing their annual voyages upriver to spawn.

The study examined how the drought affected Chinook salmon, coho salmon and steelhead trout, all part of the genus known as “salmonids,” in 13 coastal watersheds ranging from Marin to Humboldt counties. While all three fish species were impacted, Chinook salmon were able to cope by shifting their breeding activities downstream. However, fish monitoring data from the summer of 2014 revealed that steelhead trout had been eliminated from a number of individual tributaries, and coho salmon disappeared entirely from three coastal watersheds.

Read the full article at UC Berkeley 

ALASKA: ADF&G sets 2025 Chinook limits, tightens regulations

April 3, 2025 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) announced a preseason all-gear catch limit of 133,500 treaty Chinook salmon for Southeast Alaska in 2025, per the Pacific Salmon Treaty provisions.

ADF&G has set a target of 130,850 Chinook salmon, incorporating a 2 percent reduction from the treaty catch limit to serve as a buffer against exceeding the all-gear limit and triggering payback provisions.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: State imposes ‘unprecedented’ conservation measures for Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon

April 1, 2025 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is imposing what it calls “unprecedented” conservation measures to address declines of Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon — also known as king salmon — which is currently under review for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The department said in a March 18 announcement that it will be restricting western Alaska king salmon fisheries, including in Kodiak, Chignik and Sand Point.

Matt Keyse, an area management biologist at fish and game’s Sand Point office, said this is the first time the department has used data from one region to trigger management action in another.

“That is unprecedented from managing a fishery based on fish that are not found locally to the systems in the area in which we’re harvesting fish,” Keyse said.

Sand Point — off the Alaska Peninsula — is in the middle of the management region known as Area M. Although it doesn’t have its own king runs, fishermen intercept salmon that migrate through the region. In recent years, Area M’s harvest levels have drawn criticism from stakeholders in Western Alaska, who argue the fishery reduces local salmon returns.

Read the full article at KYUK

CALIFORNIA: Small bugs in California rice fields are making a huge impact for salmon

March 21, 2025 — Every morning is an early morning for scientists working the flood plains of the Sacramento Valley.

“Putting a cold pair of wet waders first thing in the morning — always the most pleasant, but that’s what the hot cup of coffee is for,” said Jacob Montgomery.

Montgomery and his crew from California Trout head out along Yolo County’s stretch of the Sacramento River. They stop along the levee to spot where four cages float in the water.

“There is a little shelf here,” Montgomery said. “We just pull all the cages in at once.”

Inside the cages are baby salmon.

“Inside each enclosure are five juvenile Chinook Salmon from the Coleman Natural Fishery,” he said.

This is part of the crew’s weekly check-up on the salmon. The fish are measured and weighed.

For decades, the number of salmon in the river has sharply dropped, but now scientists believe they just might have a solution and it comes from the unlikeliest of places.

Read the full article at KCRA