Saving Seafood

ICFA Urges COP30 Negotiators to Recognize Critical Role of Fisheries in Climate Action

November 10, 2025 — The following was released by the International Coalition of Fisheries Associations:

The International Coalition of Fisheries Associations (ICFA) reminds climate change negotiators of the critical role fisheries play in both climate mitigation and adaptation. ICFA emphasizes two key points: (1) the fisheries sector’s contribution to mitigating climate change; and (2) the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems and fish stocks. Related to both is the critical role blue foods play in global food security and nutrition.

Next week, during the 30th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries are expected to deliver more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’s) and adopt indicators under the Global Goal on Adaptation. 

“Fisheries produce low carbon proteins and lower the overall carbon intensity of the global food system. But ocean ecosystems and fisheries are impacted by climate change. We need to prioritize adaptation strategies to ensure resilience and contribute to the sector’s mitigation potential. Global food security, nutrition and the socio-economic well-being of billions is on the line,” says ICFA Chair, Ivan Lopez Van der Veen.

 In a recently adopted resolution, ICFA calls on Parties to:

·         Recognize that the fisheries sector plays a crucial role in combating climate change, as fisheries products and blue foods have among the lowest carbon footprints of all animal proteins. Implementation of NDCs 3.0 should increase the proportion of these products in the global diet to substantially reduce the carbon intensity of the global food system and support achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);

·         Take into full consideration the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems, fish stocks and economic activities at sea, and encourage all Parties to prioritize adaptation strategies that strengthen the resilience of ocean and fish resources. Better adaptation can contribute to the sector’s mitigation potential;

·         Bring together policy makers and the economic sectors, including the fisheries sector, to find pragmatic and implementable solutions to tackle climate change and to adapt to its unavoidable effects.

Read ICFA’s full resolution on climate and fisheries here. 

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Since 1988 the International Coalition of Fisheries Associations (ICFA) has been a unified seafood policy voice committed to the sustainable use of marine resources and dedicated to global food security. For more information, please visit www.fishcoalition.org

MSC research finds tuna fisheries are at most risk from climate change

November 4, 2025 — A new suite of research led by the Marine Stewardship Council has found fisheries targeting tuna species are at the most risk from the impacts of climate change.

The research paper, “Climate change risks to future sustainable fishing using global seafood ecolabel data,” was recently published in Cell Reports Sustainability and reviewed more than 500 fisheries around the world with a sustainability certification. The study examined species under multiple gear types and species, including whitefish, krill, lobster, and tuna.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Research reports capture climate change impacts on halibut

October 29, 2025 — Two recent research reports focused on halibut spatial dynamics, habitat occupation, and spawning dynamics suggest that new management considerations of commercial stocks may be warranted.

The first document, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences this past spring, focuses on identifying halibut spawning dynamics, including locating spawning grounds, and identifying the conditions occupied and the timing of occupation on these grounds, notes Austin Flanigan, a fisheries master student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and principal author of both papers.

Researchers attached pop-up satellite telemetry tags to large female halibut in the Northern Bering Sea, with time series data and tag reporting locations being used to infer spawning behavior and to identify occupied spawning habitat conditions, location, and timing

The research team found that these halibut occupied spawning habitats later and farther north than previously described. Their spawning habitat was occupied from January to May and reached as far north as the Russian continental shelf. They also observed that 42 percent of mature halibut never occupied presumed spawning habitat, suggesting the presence of skip spawning behavior. Such findings, they said, suggest that Pacific halibut exhibit unique spawning dynamics in the Northern Bering Sea, which may result in reduced reproductive potential within the northern population component.

Flanigan said that understanding reproductive output would require fecundity (number of eggs produced) data, as if skip spawning Pacific halibut have the same fecundity as those that spawn annually, then they would produce fewer offspring.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Marine heat wave known as ‘the Blob’ returns to Pacific, but so far spares Oregon and Washington

October 17, 2025 — A massive heat wave is hitting the Pacific Ocean from Kamchatka to California.

Water temperatures several degrees above normal span thousands of miles, though they have mostly stopped short of the Pacific Northwest coast. Cool water welling up from the depths is thought to be keeping surface temperatures near the Oregon and Washington coasts closer to normal.

Beyond disrupting the ocean’s food web and fisheries, the underwater heat wave, known as “the Blob,” can alter weather on land thousands of miles away.

Since May, an ever-shifting mass of overheated water has occupied much of the northern half of the Pacific Ocean.

In early September, it covered 3 million square miles — about the size of the contiguous United States — according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s “Blobtracker” program.

Read the full article at OPB

In the Delaware River, climate change and invasive species threaten shad, ‘America’s founding fish’

October 13, 2025 — American shad were a major food source for early European settlers and Native Americans who lived along the Delaware River.

Known as “America’s founding fish,” the species were so abundant that it was said people could “walk across their backs.” In 1896, more than 4 million shad were caught in a single year. But by the 1900s, overfishing caused a steep decline.

A new study published this month indicates that American shad, as well as river herring, have failed to recover in the Delaware River, which could threaten the aquatic ecosystem.

Read the full article at WHYY

Return of The Blob: Heat wave spans Pacific Ocean

October 10, 2025 — A massive heat wave is hitting the Pacific Ocean from Kamchatka to California.

Water temperatures several degrees above normal span thousands of miles, though they have mostly stopped short of the Pacific Northwest coast. Cool water welling up from the depths is thought to be keeping surface temperatures near the Oregon and Washington coasts closer to normal.

Beyond disrupting the ocean’s food web and fisheries, the underwater heat wave, known as “The Blob,” can alter weather on land thousands of miles away.

Since May, an ever-shifting mass of overheated water has occupied much of the northern half of the Pacific Ocean.

Read the full article at KUOW

Warming water has varied impact on salmon populations

October 8, 2025 — Wild salmon are super weird for a variety of reasons, including response to warming climate conditions, says fisheries researcher Peter Westley of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Salmon have really evolved in places with changing conditions, including volcanoes blowing up, glaciers melting and making really good salmon habitat,” Westley said on Wednesday, Sept. 24, in a webinar from his office on the Fairbanks campus. “Salmon are experiencing the front lines of (environmental) changes. Trends across the globe since 1991, the rate of warming is much, much faster in the Arctic. Salmon are experiencing warming and rapid change of warming.”

To maintain healthy salmon populations, the fish need cool, complex, connected, clean habitat, said Westley, an associate professor and Wakefield chair of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at UAF’s Department of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Connectivity is important so that the salmon have the ability to move around, he said. It is also important to protect the processes important to the fish, like the way groundwater comes up to cool the water, and gravel has to come into the streams, he said.

“Salmon bury their offspring alive and leave them in the gravel for months on end, nine to 10 months under the gravel.  They are born in fresh water, and then they decide freshwater is not for them and migrate to the ocean, and then they come back,” he said. “They can fill up streams in very high density and go back to their natal streams. They fight their way back home, and their bodies decay and become nutrients for others, including bears. Salmon are weird, but also awesome.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Lobsters face serious risks as oceans heat up

October 6, 2025 — The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost every other ocean region on Earth. That single fact has scientists worried about the future of the American lobster, the backbone of a two billion dollar fishery.

Warming, acidification, and marine heatwaves are not just abstract trends here. They are daily realities, reshaping one of the most iconic species in New England waters.

Communities along the coast depend on lobsters not only for income but also for identity. A shift in lobster health could ripple far beyond science labs and touch entire economies.

To understand what lies ahead, researchers at William & Mary’s Batten School and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) have been testing how lobster embryos respond to future ocean conditions. The results point to temperature as the main danger.

Read the full article at Earth.com

Marine ‘superfertilizer’ is crucial for life in the ocean and on land, including humans

October 1, 2025 — Half the oxygen in your next breath did not come from trees on land. Scientists estimate that phytoplankton in the ocean make about half of the oxygen in the air in Earth’s atmosphere.

These microscopic drifters depend on nutrients that large whales move to the sunlit surface when they release nutrient rich waste.

Field research shows that marine mammals enhance primary productivity by concentrating nitrogen near the surface through flocculent fecal plumes.

Phytoplankton and oxygen

After decades of field work, Robert Kenney, an emeritus marine research scientist at the University of Rhode Island (URI), has traced how whales, prey, and currents shape each season. His perspective helps connect nutrients, food webs, and survival across years.

Phytoplankton are tiny photosynthetic organisms that turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. Zooplankton are small animals that graze on them and feed fish, seabirds, and whales.

When nutrients are scarce near the surface, phytoplankton growth slows and the whole food web tightens. When nutrients pulse upward, growth accelerates and energy ripples through the system.

Whales often feed at depth and then return to the surface to rest, breathe, and digest. When they defecate near the surface, their waste carries nitrogen and iron that phytoplankton can use right away.

That burst of nutrients supports fast growth, which boosts food for krill and fish in the upper ocean. Many large whales filter this prey using baleen, flexible plates in their mouths that act like a sieve.

The loop continues when predators eat that prey and release nutrients again in shallow water. Over time, this recycling keeps productivity higher than it would be without whales.

Read the full article at Earth.com

Maine’s longer, hotter summers are reshaping our natural world

September 29, 2025 — When she looks at the Narraguagus River, Valerie Ouellet sees what others can’t: a thermal mosaic that explains why it’s one of the last places in America where wild Atlantic salmon come to spawn.

This 55-mile-long waterway in Downeast Maine is a hodgepodge of cold-water pockets hidden within the warmer river where adult salmon can find refuge from the state’s increasingly hot summers.

Atlantic salmon do their best growing and spawning in 68-degree water. Any higher and they stop eating; they lay fewer, smaller eggs. At 73 degrees, they swim erratically. If they don’t find cold water created by shade trees, spring-fed tributaries or groundwater seepage, some will die.

Ouellet is an ecologist with the Atlantic Salmon Federation and is part of a state and federal research team that has spent two years documenting the river’s temperature and flow to explore how close, how big and how cold these spots must be for salmon to survive.

Read the full article at Maine Public