Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Massachusetts pantry uses haddock chowder to stretch food budgets, and boost protein options

August 27, 2026 — For nearly 700 households that rely on the Family Pantry of Cape Cod each week, one item has emerged as a clear favorite: haddock chowder made with help from local fishermen. The popular meal also shows how a local partnership can stretch food budgets while getting a highly sought-after source of protein to families who need it most.

Here’s what to know

According to the Cape Cod Times, the most sought-after item at the Harwich-based Family Pantry of Cape Cod is frozen haddock chowder provided by the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

Instead of operating like a standard food pickup site, the pantry allows clients to choose from a weekly printed list, similar to shopping at a small grocery. That list can include proteins as well as canned goods, cereal, pasta, eggs, and dairy items.

The alliance also provides clam chowder and fish stew, giving pantry clients more prepared seafood options to take home.

Read the full article at The Cool Down

Lobsters and acidic seas: can shellfish help neutralise one of the greatest threats to the ocean?

August 21, 2026 — For many in the US region of New England, the lobster roll is synonymous with summertime. Loaded into a toasted bun, chunks of the sweet meat are served hot and soaked in butter, or chilled and slathered in mayonnaise with celery and herbs.

The only thing more debated than the recipe is the price: the once-humble roll now routinely fetches $30 (£22), or even $50, in a sign of the changing times – and seas.

A third-generation lobster fisherman, Scott Lord spends his days hauling traps on the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. “Whether you agree with who says why it’s happening, it is happening,” he says.

Bycatch that was once plentiful, such as sea urchins, sand dollars or starfish, are increasingly rare. And, most concerning, Lord has noticed the number of inshore lobsters dropping dramatically over the past 15 years, pushing fishers farther and farther offshore.

Motivated to find a remedy, Lord joined a regional shellfish committee. “Why are there not clams where there used to be clams? Why are they not coming back, no matter what we do?” he asks.

Hundreds of miles to the south in Massachusetts, on a sandy crook of land that spins out to form Cape Cod, Adam Subhas, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is trying to find the answers.

Read the full article at The Guardian

OREGON: Oregon’s Newest Food Trail Highlights Local Seafood and the People Who Catch It

July 29, 2026 — From dock to plate, the Oregon Coast Seafood Trail puts the people behind the catch at the center of every meal. While much of the seafood consumed in Oregon comes from outside the country, Oregon’s newest trail highlights where you can enjoy Oregon-landed seafood that directly supports local fisheries. The trail guides travelers to vetted eateries, restaurants, seafood markets, food carts and dockside retailers that prioritize local seafood.

Central to the trail is the idea of “Oregon-landed” seafood, meaning the catch was delivered to a port in Oregon. Oregon’s fisheries are among the most sustainably managed in the world, with species like pink shrimp, albacore tuna, groundfish and Dungeness crab certified for responsible harvest. Additional local species — including Pacific halibut, salmon, oysters, clams and sea vegetables — round out the diversity of Oregon’s coastal waters and ensure every meal reflects the region’s bounty.

Each stop along the trail offers a window into the working waterfronts that sustain coastal communities. A dynamic map helps travelers sort stops by region, business type, seasonal events and more. The trail allows visitors to time their trip with the commercial crab season, albacore tuna runs or opportunities to buy directly from the docks. Along the way, visitors can explore coastal eateries, seafood markets and other businesses where transparency, sustainability and local sourcing are part of the story.

Read the full article at South Sound

NOAA scientists set sail on landmark West Coast Ocean Acidification survey

July 21, 2026 — The following was released by the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

On July 20, 2026, researchers embarked on the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program’s West Coast Ocean Acidification mission (WCOA 2026). Departing from San Diego aboard the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (R/V) Sikuliaq, the team will travel north to Washington, adding important new observations to NOAA’s long-term monitoring of ocean acidification and its impacts on marine resources.

WCOA 2026 will couple ocean chemistry, biology, and physics to build a more comprehensive view of how extreme events impact biogeochemistry and ecosystems.

“Results from past WCOA cruises have provided novel insights into acidification rates and impacts in coastal and estuary habitats that provide our nation with rich fish and shellfish resources,” said Dr. Simone Alin, Supervisory Oceanographer, NOAA/PMEL. Resource managers and harvesters can use this information to inform fisheries management decisions.

This intensive 30-day coastal research cruise aboard the 261-foot research vessel offers scientists a unique opportunity of sampling during an El Niño that is on track to become one of the strongest on record. El Niño brings warmer water and can alter upwelling and precipitation patterns in the region. Phytoplankton and zooplankton communities will follow these warmer waters, which impacts food webs and fisheries as seen during past marine heatwaves.

Two days after the Sikuliaq departs, the PMEL SeaTrac will head south from Washington to collect added coastal measurements during peak ocean acidification and hypoxia season and pick up any El Niño signal that may have made to the northern California Current System this summer. These OA cruises provide critical high-quality data for the U.S. Coastal Large Marine Ecosystems, and are essential for modeling and forecasting changes in ocean acidification and hypoxia to better prepare for future impacts to valued fisheries and ecosystems.

Led by researchers at the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, & Ecosystem Studies and PMEL, researchers will collect high-quality ocean chemistry data, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and other observations. Scientists will also collect environmental DNA, which can reveal the diversity and abundance of ocean life in different ocean conditions.

Data collected during WCOA 2026 are essential for validating models and forecasts of ocean conditions like J-SCOPE. This short term (six to nine month) forecast is used for the California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment. High quality ocean carbon chemistry data is required to forecast the saturation state of calcium carbonate, the mineral building block used by shellfish like Dungeness crabs, clams, and oysters.

Other coordinated regular coastal fisheries surveys, including the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) enhance the impact of WCOA 2026. By conducting biological net tows at established stations, researchers will gain high-quality data on marine life.

Ultimately, the data collected through WCOA 2026 will serve as a foundational benchmark for monitoring, modeling and research in the region. These data will provide calibration information for sensor networks designed to fill measurement gaps between research cruises. With the potential for sampling to occur as ocean conditions change with El Niño, NOAA and our partners will be able to better understand how extreme conditions alter vital marine resources like Dungeness crabs, krill, plankton and other fisheries.

MAINE: Hard-shell clam project aims to diversify aquaculture and shellfish harvesting in Maine

January 5, 2026 — An effort to diversify Maine’s aquaculture and shellfish industries is getting a boost from a hard shell clam farming project near Brunswick.

The project, led by the conservation science group Manomet, involved seeding some 400,000 quahogs in floating upweller systems that are commonly used in oyster farming, said senior fisheries director Marissa McMahan.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Gulf of Maine sees rising pH, defying expectations of increasing ocean acidity

July 31, 2025 — The Gulf of Maine—home to commercial fisheries for oysters, clams and mussels—has unexpectedly avoided an increase in seawater acidity, helping to preserve the health of its fisheries.

“Contrary to expectation,” a team of scientists wrote in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, we … find that pH has increased (+ 0.2 pH units) over the past 40 years, despite concurrent rising atmospheric CO2.” (Determining the decades-long trend required measurements of boron isotopes within annual skeletal bands built by crustose coralline algae. More about that later.)

The Gulf’s acidity levels are unexpected because atmospheric levels of  continue to climb. And because carbon dioxide is absorbed faster and easier into , the frigid waters of the Gulf would be expected to take in more carbon. More carbon in water generally lowers pH and increases acidity.

“One goes down and the other goes up,” said Alan Wanamaker, an Iowa State University professor of earth, atmosphere, and climate and a paper co-author. “That’s what we’ve seen in the .”

Read the full article at PHYS.org

US research center announces funding for stock management, clam aging, and other seafood projects

July 15, 2025 — The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS), a U.S. research center, has announced nearly USD 500,000 (EUR 429,000) in funding for new finfish and shellfish research projects.

At the organization’s annual spring meeting, SCEMFIS announced USD 218,531 (EUR 187,300) in new funding, adding to the USD 277,000 (EUR 237,400) which the organization dedicated to groundbreaking finfish and shellfish research at the beginning of the year.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

New study paints gloomy picture of climate change’s impact on commercial fishing

April 22, 2025 — A new study of some of California’s most commercially significant aquatic species paints a grim picture for the future of the state’s fishing industry under the growing threat of climate change.

The study, compiled by a host of researchers including federal and state scientists as well as researchers from UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis, looked at 34 aquatic species in an attempt to gauge how each would fare under predicted climate change scenarios.

Among the species studied were Dungeness crab, red abalone, Pacific herring, Pismo clams, pink shrimp, Pacific bonito and California spiny lobster. The group ranked each by their level of vulnerability to changing environmental conditions.

“The most striking thing that we found is that among the species that were ranked as the most highly vulnerable happened to also be some of California’s economically valuable and culturally important species,” said Mikaela Provost, assistant professor of fisheries ecology at UC Davis and co-author of the study.

California’s oceans are highly productive due to seasonal upwelling which keeps water temperatures cool and filled with nutrients. But models of future conditions forecast disruption through rising temperatures, deoxygenation and potential changes in circulation.

Read the full story at NBC Bay Area

Offshore wind farms expected to reduce clam fishery revenue, study finds

June 23, 2022 — An important East Coast shellfish industry is projected to suffer revenue losses as offshore wind energy develops along the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts, according to two Rutgers studies.

The studies, which appear in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, examined how offshore wind farms planned for the eastern United States could disrupt fishing of the Atlantic surfclam, a major economic driver from Virginia to Massachusetts that generates more than $30 million in direct annual revenue. Total fleet revenue declines measured by the studies ranged from 3 percent to 15 percent, depending on the scale of offshore wind development and response of the fishing fleet.

In New Jersey, losses could be as high as 25 percent for  based in Atlantic City.

“Understanding the impacts of fishery exclusion and fishing effort displacement from development of  is critical to the sustainability of the Atlantic surfclam fishing industry,” said co-author Daphne Munroe, an associate professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

“Tools that can predict and manage these complex and interconnected challenges are essential for developing and evaluating strategies that allow for multiple users of the offshore environment.”

Read the full story at Phys.org