Saving Seafood

New England’s shrimp fishery to shut down for the long haul after years of decline

December 11, 2025 — Regulators voted Thursday to extend a shutdown preventing New England fishermen from catching shrimp, a historic industry that has recently fallen victim to warming oceans.

New England fishermen, especially those from Maine, used to catch millions of pounds of small pink shrimp in the winter, but the business has been under a fishing moratorium since 2014. Rising temperatures have created an inhospitable environment for the shrimp, and their population is too low to fish sustainably, scientists have said.

An arm of the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Thursday to shut down the fishery for at least another three years. Abundance of the shrimp remained “poor” this year despite slightly improved environmental conditions, the Atlantic States said in documents.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Snow Crab Collapse Linked to Energetic Limitations During a Marine Heatwave

December 8, 2025 — A new study addresses one of the largest mass mortality events in recent marine history—the abrupt collapse of the snow crab population in the eastern Bering Sea. The research team was led by NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center fishery biologist Erin Fedewa. They set out to identify potential factors driving the increased mortality, population collapse, and recovery potential of Bering Sea snow crab.

Erin and her team measured snow crab energy reserves during and after the 2018–2019 marine heatwave and population collapse. This approach is the first of its kind for Bering Sea crab stocks. Findings show that warmer conditions and high population density led to energetic limitations—likely causing the snow crab population collapse.

A New, Rapid Energetic Condition Metric for Fisheries Management

Poor energetic condition is a state in which crabs have low energy reserves. This can increase starvation and mortality risk, emphasizing the importance of monitoring the energetic condition of individuals in marine populations. Techniques used to monitor energy reserves in fish often rely on data collected rapidly during annual scientific surveys, such as the weight-at-size of individual fish.

However, snow crabs have exoskeletons; they molt as juveniles, which uses a lot of their energy stores. They require more sensitive techniques to detect energy reserves beyond simple length-weight measurements. These techniques are often time-intensive and costly. Scientists have not routinely monitored energetic condition in Bering Sea crab populations to date.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions—and Crippled the Economy

December 2, 2025 — European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions.

Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30% from 2005 levels, compared with a 17% drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.

Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal

Scientists find coastal seas acidifying shockingly fast

December 1, 2025 — New research from the University of St Andrews reports that some coastal regions are on track to become far more acidic than scientists once believed. As additional atmospheric CO2 enters the air, it dissolves into the ocean more quickly than anticipated, driving a rapid drop in pH that threatens coastal industries and livelihoods around the world.

Because atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH (acidity) rise and fall together, any increase in CO2 above the ocean is soon reflected in the water below. This steady absorption of carbon makes seawater progressively more acidic over time.

Upwelling Systems Intensify Ocean Acidification

In a study published on November 13th in Nature Communications, the research team used the California Current as a case study and found that upwelling regions significantly intensify ocean acidification rather than simply reflecting atmospheric trends.

Upwelling occurs when deeper ocean layers, which are already nutrient rich and naturally acidic, move upward toward the shore. Organic material from surface waters sinks and is broken down by microbes in the deep ocean, a process that releases CO2 and increases acidity. When these deep waters rise again, they deliver this accumulated acidity back to the surface, where the water interacts with atmospheric CO2 and becomes even more acidic.

Read the full article at Science Daily

ALASKA: Alaska seafood harvesting jobs down for fifth straight year

December 1, 2025 — Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, facing lower prices for its harvest and rising costs, saw a loss of 443 harvesting jobs in 2024—a fifth straight year of employment loss, state labor officials said.

That 7.6% job decline was similar to the previous year’s 7.8% job loss, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development noted in the November issue of Alaska Economic Trends.

Seafood harvesting in Alaska has lost over a third of its total jobs in the past decade, with fishing employment down every year of the last 10 except for 2019. That includes the summer peak, which has fallen about 30%, from 24,600 jobs in July 2014 to 17,400 in July 2024.

While most other Alaska industries bounced back after big job declines during the Covid-19 pandemic, seafood harvesting continues to struggle as the industry faces unpredictable runs, the volatility of climate change, seafood processing plant closures and sales, and disrupted fisheries.

International trade is also shifting, with China now purchasing more fish from Vietnam than from the United States.

Labor Department economist Joshua Warren said that how tariffs will affect these relationships isn’t clear, but they will likely put additional pressure on prices as domestic harvesters compete with countries that have more favorable trade deals.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

In One Week, Trump Moves to Reshape U.S. Environmental Policy

November 24, 2025 — The environmental rollbacks came one after the next this week, potentially affecting everything from the survival of rare whales to the health of the Hudson River.

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, narrowing the reach of the Clean Water Act.

On Wednesday, federal wildlife agencies announced changes to the Endangered Species Act that could make it harder to rescue endangered species from the brink of extinction.

And on Thursday, the Interior Department moved to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region in the high Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.

If the Trump administration’s proposals are finalized and upheld in court, they could reshape U.S. environmental policy for years to come, environmental lawyers and activists said.

“This was the week from hell for environmental policy in the United States,” said Pat Parenteau, a professor emeritus and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School. “Unless stopped by the courts, each of these proposed rollbacks will do irreparable harm to the nation’s water quality, endangered species and marine ecosystems.”

The quick pace of these proposals was notable, even for an administration that has enacted Mr. Trump’s agenda at breakneck speed.

While the administration was working in Washington to dismantle environmental protections, 3,300 miles to the south, negotiators from nearly 200 nations were trying to improve the planet’s health at the United Nations climate summit in Brazil.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Helping Alaska’s Coastal Communities Adapt with Next-Generation Ocean Forecasting

November 18, 2025 — Changing ocean conditions threaten lives, livelihoods, and invaluable marine resources across the United States. From marine heatwaves and the collapse of snow crab populations in Alaska, to last year’s historic hurricane season, the day-to-day realities of people throughout the nation are being impacted by reduced food security, increased operational costs for fisheries, and higher seafood costs for consumers.

To help fishing communities and fisheries managers anticipate and respond to these challenges, NOAA is leading a nationwide effort called the Changing Ecosystems and Fisheries Initiative. This initiative is building a powerful new ocean forecasting system that delivers short and long-term predictions of future ocean and ecosystem conditions. Through a combination of high-resolution modeling and community engagement, it aims to provide the information needed to support food security, protect American fisheries, and strengthen coastal economies in the face of rapid changes.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Coastal ocean acidification advancing faster than expected, threatening local economies

November 14, 2025 — New research from the University of St Andrews has found that some coastal areas will become much more acidic than previously anticipated. With added atmospheric CO2, these areas are acidifying more quickly than thought, posing an existential threat to coastal economies around the world.

Because atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH (acidity) are tightly coupled, the more CO2 that is released into the atmosphere, the more is absorbed by seawater, making the ocean progressively more acidic.

However, in a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers, using the California Current as an example, show that oceanic upwelling systems actually amplify .

Read the full article at phys.org

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

Embrace ‘blue’ foods as a climate strategy at COP30, fisheries ministers say (commentary)

November 12, 2025 — As two coastal countries connected by the Atlantic Ocean and five centuries of shared history, Brazil and Portugal have long appreciated the value of “blue” or aquatic foods, including our shared love of bacalhau, or salted cod.

Portugal ranks third in the world and first in the EU for per capita fish and seafood consumption, while in Brazil, aquatic foods support more than 3 million livelihoods, with consumption of whole, raw fish reaching as much as 800 grams (28 ounces) per day in the Amazon, which is hosting the U.N. climate talks for the first time in its gateway city of Belém.

But as our global food system comes under increasing pressure, from climate change to shifting diets, we also share the recognition that blue foods play a crucial role in building more resilient, adaptive, and nutritionally balanced food systems.

Read the full article at Mongabay