Saving Seafood

Humanity depends on the ocean — Here is what we need to prioritize for immediate ocean science research

April 15, 2025 — Humankind is inextricably dependent on the ocean. Many of our greatest civilizations have thrived on the rim of the ocean. Today, we are more reliant than ever on the ocean for our economic, social and physical well-being.

Maritime activities, from global trade to tourism, exceed US$3 trillion annually. The “ocean economy” is the fourth largest in the world. Furthermore, our global economic vitality is largely due to the cost-effective nature of ocean transportation, which contributes to the reduced price per ton of shipped goods.

From submarine cables to shipping, fisheries and aquaculture, we are increasingly reliant on the blue economy. Roughly 20 per cent of the animal protein that we eat comes from marine fish.

The ocean has changed dramatically in the past century, and we expect more change to come. Collapses of fisheries, coral reefs, shark populations and other species — along with increased dead zones, red tide blooms and invasive species — have followed increased human development, industrial use of the sea, climate change and pollution.

Read the full article at The Conversation

White House budget would slash NOAA climate, ocean programs

April 15, 2025 — The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 federal budget would slash Department of Commerce funding by more than 25%, eliminating the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research program and targeting other climate, ocean and fisheries programs within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Oceanic and Atmospheric program funding would be reduced by $485 million to $171 million, according to news media reports on the Office of Management and Budget document that began circulating among NOAA staffers and leaked to news organizations April 11 in Washington.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Trump plan would eliminate NOAA climate research, slash agency budget

April 14, 2025 — A new Trump proposal would eliminate nearly all National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration labs focused on studying the world’s weather, climate and oceans and would slash much of the agency’s budget — part of what the White House document describes as an effort to sever all “climate-related programs” from the agency.

Documents detailing the administration’s proposal, reviewed by The Washington Post, would cut NOAA’s $6.1 billion budget by 27 percent overall, while effectively eliminating a research branch of the agency whose mission is to improve weather and climate forecasts, natural disaster warnings, and understanding of the natural world.

The programs are “misaligned with the President’s agenda and the expressed will of the American people,” the document says.

With the plan, the Trump administration has significantly accelerated its attacks on climate science, while opening itself to further criticism that it is handicapping the country’s ability to protect itself from natural disasters by cutting crucial and popular weather forecasting programs.

Read the full article at the Washington Post

US offshore wind farm projects slow as Trump opposition adds to hurdles

April 7, 2025 —  Energy firms have slowed construction of offshore wind farms in the U.S. for various reasons in recent years, including, most recently, opposition from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

Offshore wind was a key pillar of former President Joe Biden’s promise that fighting climate change will create jobs and invigorate the economy. In 2023 and 2024, however, several offshore wind companies took billions in write-offs, impairments and other cancellation fees after determining they could no longer complete projects profitably due to rocketing construction costs, higher interest rates and supply chain snags.

After Trump suspended new offshore wind leasing on his first day back in the Oval Office in January, several energy analysts said they did not expect any new offshore wind projects other than those already under construction to move forward over the next few years.

There are four offshore wind farms in service and producing power in the U.S., and another four projects under construction that are expected to enter service from 2025-2027. There are also several projects in advanced development.

Recently, some analysts have warned that projects already under construction may not be safe from attacks by the Trump administration.

Read the full article at Reuters

Biden’s ‘ambitious climate goals’ go down in literal flames by popular American beach

April 4, 2025 — A major part of a first-of-its-kind green energy project, which the Biden administration bragged about, is now lying in ruins and polluting some of America’s beautiful ocean and seashore in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Exclusive images obtained by Fox News Digital show the shattered remains of what is left of an ocean wind turbine constructed by Vineyard Wind in a green energy project touted by the Biden administration.

The turbine was recently struck by lightning and destroyed just months after one of its blades dangerously fell into the Atlantic Ocean, dropping non-biodegradable fiberglass shards into the water, some of which washed ashore, forcing six Nantucket beaches to close.

Read the full article at Fox News

Pacific studies axed in Pentagon research cuts

March 24, 2025 — Steven Mana ‘oakamai Johnson, a Cornell University professor who grew up on Saipan, has devoted his life to studying the ocean and how people in the Pacific depend on the fish in it to feed themselves and support their economies. Lately he’s been studying when they fight over them.

He has been working on a Pentagon-funded project called “Future Fish Wars : Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth, ” for which the military awarded a grant in 2023. It was looking at how illegal fishing, climate change and changing migration patterns of fish species could contribute to new conflicts between rival fishermen that could escalate into much larger confrontations—looking mostly at the Pacific and the Arctic.

“All the fisheries climate research shows that there’s going to be a reshuffling of the deck of where these trans-boundary fish stocks are going to end up, ” said Johnson. “It might be important to understand, you know, what is the texture of that scenario ? Who’s involved ? You know, where has fisheries conflict happened in the past, what was driving it ?”

The South China Sea, once considered among the world’s richest fishing grounds, has been depleted by years of industrialized fishing methods. Today, Chinese fishermen—backed by the Chinese military—have clashed violently with fishermen from neighboring countries, creating an increasingly militarized standoff. China has also sent its vast state-subsidized fishing fleet across the globe, with large groups of vessels descending on South America’s coastlines.

Read the full articles at Yahoo! News

Fishermen want to go green but say DOGE cuts prevent that

March 19, 2025 — Commercial fishermen and seafood processors and distributors looking to switch to new, lower-carbon emission systems say the federal funding they relied on for this work is either frozen or unavailable due to significant budget cuts promoted by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The changes are designed to replace old diesel-burning engines and outdated at-sea cooling systems and are touted by environmentalists as a way to reduce seafood’s carbon footprint. Salmon harvesters in Washington state, scallop distributors in Maine and halibut fishermen in Alaska are among those who told The Associated Press their federal commitments for projects like new boat engines and refrigeration systems have been rescinded or are under review.

“The uncertainty. This is not a business-friendly environment,” said Togue Brawn, a Maine seafood distributor who said she is out tens of thousands of dollars. “If they want to make America great again, then honor your word and tell people what’s going on.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Court says NOAA must explain lack of protective measures for corals

March 10, 2025 — A federal judge has ordered NOAA to explain why it declined to adopt regulations to protect 20 coral species designated in 2014 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

In a 42-page decision, Judge Micah W.J. Smith of the District Court of Hawaii said NOAA Fisheries, also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, failed to provide adequate explanation for denying a 2020 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to impose protective measures for the species that live Florida, the Caribbean, and the Indo-Pacific region and are threatened by the impacts of climate change.

“Even under [a] highly deferential standard of review, two facets of NMFS’ denial letter fall short,” Smith wrote. “NMFS offered no reasoned explanation for declining to protect the threatened coral species from their gravest threat, climate change. And for one set of the threatened species, the Caribbean corals, NMFS offered no reasoned explanation for declining to adopt regulations addressing localized threats.”

Read the full article at E&E News

Projects in the Field: Saving money and time with an EM Pilot Program in the U.S. sea scallop fishery

March 8, 2025 — Reprinted with permission of EM4Fish:

A project led by the Coonamessett Farm Foundation (CFF) and Saltwater, Inc (SWI). is testing the feasibility of voluntary, cost-shared electronic monitoring (EM) on six commercial sea scallop fishing vessels in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Turbulent outlook for the fishery

After ranking among the most economically important fisheries in the United States (U.S.) over the last decade, accounting for more than $480 million of commercial landings in 2022 alone, the Atlantic sea scallop fishery is bracing for a few challenging years ahead. The total exploitable biomass of sea scallops appears to be on a downward trend, with climate change threatening the long-term health of the population. The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) estimated annual projected landings for the 2025 fishing year to generate only about $348.3 million (19.8 million pounds) in landings, a 28% reduction from 2024.

As the fishery looks for novel cost-cutting measures to weather the coming reductions in catch, the Industry-Funded Scallop (IFS) Program sticks out as large annual expenditure for all fishermen. Observers for the sea scallop fishery are managed though the IFS. In this program, vessels selected to carry an observer must pay for that coverage, equal to ~$800 each day of the trip. Although, the IFS sets aside 1% of the annual catch limit that is redistributed back to vessels to partially offset their costs for carrying an observer. In 2025, this 1% set aside would amount to about $3.5 million in landings.

In addition to observer costs, another systematic inefficiency associated with current sea scallop fishing management is the days-at-sea (DAS) calculation methodology. Currently it is not possible to determine whether a vessel is fishing or transiting from the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) alone, days-at-sea are currently calculated by transit time after a vessel crosses the VMS Demarcation Line, which runs parallel to the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine, and notifies the Coast Guard of its fishing activity. As a result of this rule, vessels that depart from ports closer to productive fishing regions are at an advantage. For example, a sea scallop vessel based in New Bedford, MA planning to fish on Georges Bank in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean could transit along an efficient, straight pathway. Whereas a vessel departing from Cape May, NJ might elect to transit along the U.S. coast to Nantucket before darting out of the VMS Demarcation Line to fish the same area.

By hugging the coast, vessels departing from the Mid-Atlantic consume more fuel and waste time. Furthermore, these vessels are not permitted to transit over several closed rotational sea scallop access areas, which further restricts their trajectories. If DAS could be determined based on the exact time a sea scallop dredge enters the water for the first time during a trip, individual vessels could save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a season, while spending fewer consecutive days away from their families.

Read the full article at EM4Fish

Federal judge sides with environmentalists to protect Gulf corals

March 8, 2025 — A federal judge in Hawaii ruled Thursday that the National Marine Fisheries Service had wrongly denied climate change protections to 20 threatened coral species in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, even though the service had previously identified climate change as the main threat to these corals’ survival.

U.S. District Judge Micah Smith granted partial summary judgement to the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned for the corals’ protection in 2020 and sued the service in 2023 for regulations to address climate change, a ban on international trade, and protections against local threats like development and poor water quality.

“I’m delighted by this court ruling because it underlines climate change’s overwhelming threat to imperiled corals,” said Emily Jeffers, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve lost half of the world’s coral reefs in the past 40 years, and if we don’t act quickly the rest could disappear forever by the end of this century.”

Smith determined that the service failed to explain properly why it wouldn’t protect corals from climate change.

The agency had claimed such regulations would have “limited effectiveness,” but Smith found this explanation inadequate, especially since climate change poses the greatest threat to these species. The court labeled this decision “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the agency to reconsider.

“In reaching this conclusion, it is worth noting what NMFS did not say. NMFS did not conclude that it lacked the legal authority to adopt Section 4(d) regulations to address climate change. Nor did it say that it was unaware of what Section 4(d) regulations it might adopt to accomplish those ends, or that the center’s petition suffered from a lack of clarity,” Smith wrote.

The judge similarly overturned the service’s decision not to issue regulations protecting Caribbean coral species from local threats, finding that the agency also provided no proper justification for this choice.

Read the full article Court House News Service