Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Climate change challenges commercial fishing industry

June 26, 2026 — In Rhode Island, the commercial fishing industry is a pillar of the state’s economy and culture, but with global warming and dynamic environmental changes, the industry is sailing into the unknown.

While New England is outpacing much of the United States in rising temperatures, Rhode Island is warming even faster than its regional neighbors, according to a 2022 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and The Providence Journal.

Sea levels have also risen considerably across the ocean state, with the Newport tide gauge rising 10.1 inches over the past century, according to NOAA.

Rhode Island’s sea levels have gained momentum over the last decade, now rising by an inch every eight years, according to Sea Level Rise. This growth is evident in Providence, while the capital city took 40 years to rise six inches, it’s now projected to gain another six inches in just the next 16 years.

The Narragansett Bay water has also increased by three degrees Fahrenheit over the past century with water levels rising up to seven inches, according to Save The Bay. These unpredictable environmental changes make it increasingly difficult for commercial fishermen and fisheries to rely on consistent ecosystems while abiding by catch quotas.

Read the full article at East Bay RI

Warming oceans were turning fish male, then something unexpected happened

June 25, 2026 — In many fish species, water temperature determines the sex of offspring. As oceans warm, that mechanism has raised a troubling question: could entire fish populations collapse simply by running out of females?

A new ten-year study offers an unexpected and cautiously hopeful answer.

In European seabass exposed to elevated temperatures, the initial spike in male births reversed itself by the third generation, with females coming back in greater numbers.

The warming effect, it turns out, is not necessarily cumulative.

The findings emerged from an international experiment conducted across Spain, France, and Brazil involving more than 3,000 European seabass over a decade.

Brazilian contributors to the study included Maira da Silva Rodrigues, who analyzed the gonads of the third generation of fish during her doctoral studies at the Botucatu Institute of Biosciences of São Paulo State University, under the guidance of Rafael Henrique Nóbrega.

Read the full article at Earth.com

Predicting Future Northeast Ocean Conditions: Forecast Debuts in 2026 State of the Ecosystem Reports

June 24, 2026 — Fishermen, fisheries managers, and scientists have observed changes in our oceans that are impacting the location and growth of fish stocks. Until recently, there was no reliable way to predict these changes. This year, the 2026 Mid-Atlantic and New England State of the Ecosystem reports contain the first operational seasonal and decadal ocean forecasts for U.S. coastal fisheries regions. These ocean forecasts provide predictions of future marine ecosystem conditions that could impact the availability of commercial, recreational, and protected fisheries species. They can help resource managers make more informed decisions.

The Northeast Integrated Ecosystem Assessment team produces the State of the Ecosystem reports annually for the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Councils. They provide a synthesis of Northeast Shelf ecosystem information. They are part of a holistic approach to maintain healthy and productive fisheries by considering environmental and socioeconomic information in decision making. The reports:

  • Contain current and long-term information about the Northeast Shelf ecosystems
  • Document how well the ecosystems are currently meeting fishery management objectives
  • Highlight potential risks to meeting those objectives.

However, resource managers have long sought forward-looking ocean forecasts that predict future ocean conditions to help them make more informed decisions.

“Due to limited resources, we have moved to more multi-year specifications for stocks, so the impacts of our decisions are now longer lasting. Given the increasingly dynamic nature of the ocean, and management’s sometimes-limited ability to be as dynamic in response, delivery of ocean forecasts to the Council provides more tools at our disposal to make better decisions that span multiple years.” — Megan Ware, member of the New England Fisheries Management Council

NOAA scientists in the Northeast are now providing their Councils with predicted ocean temperatures in this year’s” State of the Ecosystem reports using NOAA’s Modular Ocean Model version 6 ocean forecasts, developed by NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The inclusion of the forecasts marks the agency’s first application of an ocean forecast in an ecosystem-based fisheries management product.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Scientists tag Pacific cod to track climate shifts in the Bering Sea

June 24, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries scientists have completed a multi-year satellite tagging study of Pacific cod in the Bering Sea, shedding new light on how the species responds to warming ocean conditions and what those movements mean for fisheries management.

The study, launched in 2019 and led by Dr. Susanne McDermott of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, was prompted by a dramatic northward shift in Pacific cod distribution that began in 2017, when the Bering Sea entered a period of unprecedented warming and sharply reduced sea ice. Pacific cod support Alaska’s second largest groundfish fishery and play a central role in the broader Bering Sea ecosystem.

“There was tremendous anxiety over what’s going on,” said McDermott. “Why are these fish in different places? Is this something that’s changing on a population level? Is this just the same population moving into different areas?”

To find answers, the research team — which also included fisheries biologists Julie Nielsen and Kimberly Rand — deployed pop-up satellite archival tags on cod in both summer and winter. The tags recorded depth, water temperature, light levels, and acceleration at intervals as short as one second, and transmitted that data to the Argos satellite network after detaching from the fish and surfacing. Tags that were physically recovered — returned by fishermen or beachcombers — yielded the full, unabridged dataset.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Official US ‘Shellfish’ Definition Changed, Removes ‘Having a Shell’

June 24, 2026 — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has finalized a regulatory change redefining “shellfish,” removing the long-standing requirement that species under the classification must have an external shell.

The rule, published June 23 in the Federal Register, updates language in the Code of Federal Regulations to align with modern science and industry practices, officials said.

This means that squid, cuttlefish, octopus, and other cephalopods will now be included within the regulatory definition of shellfish, The agency said the move would clear up any ambiguity about classification, which it added has led to inconsistent treatment of mollusks and related species at U.S. ports of entry.

Read the full article at Newsweek

Our Ocean Conference results in USD 6.4 billion in global commitments toward blue economic advancements

June 22, 2026 — The 2026 Our Ocean Conference, held recently in Mombasa, Kenya, brought together over 100 governments, businesses, and civil society organizations and resulted in 320 new commitments valued at USD 6.4 billion (EUR 5.5 billion) to advance ocean conservation, sustainable fisheries, climate resilience, and blue economic ventures.

Commitments from the conference include work that will soon be done in French Polynesia, Canada, and Kenya.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Northwest’s yanked observatories to return to ocean after Trump administration backs down

June 19, 2026 — The Trump administration has reversed course on its effort to shut down a network of ocean research stations in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The National Science Foundation on Thursday announced a halt to the dismantling of floating scientific observatories off Alaska, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and Greenland.

Researchers were offloading the last of the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s six high-tech data buoys from Pacific Northwest waters onto a flatbed truck in Newport, Oregon, Thursday morning when they got the word: The science foundation was turning the dismantling ship around.

“The U.S. National Science Foundation appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders that have informed us they rely on data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI),” the agency’s statement reads. “Effective immediately, NSF will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance.”

Read the full article at KUOW

As global warming threatens corals, scientists search for reefs that can take the heat

June 19, 2026 — Perched on the bow of an aluminum landing craft, Anne Cohen gazed a few yards ahead of the vessel toward a yellow robot gliding across the emerald Majuro lagoon.

The unmanned surface vehicle, called Yellowfin, was quickly becoming one of the coral researcher’s most dependable guides in these Central Pacific waters.

“She’s the best dive buddy,” said Cohen, a tenured scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod. Programmed to navigate to a precise set of coordinates, the robot cut through small swells like a tiny sailboat without a mast, directing Cohen toward a destination she had traveled thousands of miles to revisit.

When the robot finally paused, hovering in place, Cohen recognized it as her cue. Somewhere below should be a patch of reef she’d been observing over the last few years, and she was eager to see how it was faring. Each visit carried a growing weight of uncertainty.

Since 2023, record-breaking marine heat waves have swept through the tropics, fueling the most severe global coral bleaching event ever recorded. More than 80 percent of the world’s reefs have been impacted in at least 83 countries and territories. Corals have been so stressed by the extreme temperatures, they’ve expelled the tiny algae living inside their tissues that provide them with food and their brilliant hues, leaving them pale, ghostly and struggling to survive. Many have not recovered.

Read the full article at Ars Techina 

Report: Trump backs off ending ocean monitoring after Murkowski co-leads block of plan in Senate

June 19, 2026 — The Trump administration’s dismantling of an ocean monitoring system used for purposes such as ecosystem and climate monitoring has been put on hold after the U.S. Senate in a bipartisan vote Wednesday passed a measure blocking the plan, according to published reports.

The National Science Foundation is expected to announce Thursday it will pause efforts to take apart the $368 million Ocean Observatories Initiative while convening an expert panel to determine its future, according to The New York Times, citing a review of documents obtained by the newspaper.
The NSA stated in May it planned to remove instruments from waters off Alaska, Washington state, Oregon, North Carolina and Greenland during the coming year, with the first occurring this week in Oregon.

Deep sea observation system that tracks climate change saved from disassembly

June 19, 2026 — A critical deep ocean observation network that includes a long-standing station off the coast of Alaska has been saved from getting dismantled. As first reported by the New York Times, the Trump administration dropped its plan to get rid of the ocean and climate tracking system after the U.S. Senate unanimously blocked the move this week.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley sponsored the measure, which prohibits the National Science Foundation from spending federal money to remove the equipment anchored off the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina and in an area called the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Murkowski said the Ocean Observatories Initiative collects hard-to-access information that’s critical for understanding warming seas.

“This is all happening at a time when everybody’s talking about El Niño, and what that is going to bring in terms of the potential for extreme weather events,” Murkowski said. “This is not the time to be turning off one of our most valuable scientific assets.”

Read the full article at KTOO