Saving Seafood

Trump’s NOAA pick stands by budget cuts, calls staffing ‘a top priority’

July 10, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a panel of U.S. senators on Wednesday that he would make it “a top priority” to fill staffing shortages created by recent firings and buyouts across the National Weather Service, while also standing by the administration’s proposal to make drastic cuts to weather and climate research budgets.

In a confirmation hearing imbued with concern over how to prevent disasters like the deadly Texas floods, Neil Jacobs shared ideas such as using satellites to improve severe weather warnings and “modernizing” NOAA’s weather radios, which use radio signals to broadcast emergency information. Jacobs was not asked to weigh in on what may or may not have contributed to the disaster in Texas. But he stressed a desire to see the more than 120 Weather Service forecast offices across the country be fully staffed.

As Jacobs answered senators’ questions, he signaled a future in which the agency’s sprawling weather and climate research enterprise could be diminished and more closely tied to the process of weather forecasting. And he repeatedly hinted at opportunities for government scientists to collaborate with the private sector, something that Republican strategists emphasized in the policy plan known as Project 2025.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

These Cod Have Been Shrinking Dramatically for Decades. Now, Scientists Say They’ve Solved the Mystery

July 7, 2025 — A new study reveals that decades of overfishing have altered the evolution of cod in the eastern Baltic Sea.

The research, published in the journal Science Advances on June 25, aimed to answer a question that had puzzled scientists for decades: What’s behind the dramatic size change in eastern Baltic cod?

These fish used to be enormous. In 1996, the biggest Baltic cod grew more than three feet long. By 2019, however, their sizes had been cut in half, and the cod’s weight was but a fraction of its previous glory. Now, the average cod can sit in a person’s cupped hands.

For decades, fishers in the Baltic Sea caught cod relentlessly, using large nets. Smaller fish could escape more easily, presenting an external pressure to remain smaller. But directly connecting the population’s decrease in size to evolution—and not other environmental factors, such as pollution or temperature change—is notoriously difficult for scientists.

Regulators banned fishing of eastern Baltic cod in 2019 due to a population collapse, but their size still shows no signs of bouncing back. In the new study, scientists find that overfishing did not merely remove the biggest individuals—it changed the genetic composition of the cod population, predisposing them to remain small.

“Human harvesting elicits the strongest selection pressures in nature,” Thorsten Reusch, a marine ecologist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany and co-author of the paper, tells Emily Anthes of the New York Times. “It can be really fast that you see evolutionary change.”

Read the full article at The Smithsonian Magazine

Warming Gulf of Maine Buffers Ocean Acidification—For Now

July 7, 2025 — In the face of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Gulf of Maine is thought to be particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification. Its vulnerability has to do with temperature: The waters of the gulf are cold, and cold water dissolves carbon dioxide more easily than warmer water does. Increased carbon dioxide decreases the pH of the ocean (making it more acidic), a concern for the health of the region’s ecosystems as well as its lucrative shellfish industry.

But determining seawater chemistry is complicated. It requires advanced equipment and the assessment of complex physical, chemical, and biological processes. Until now, no long-term data existed to put individual measurements into context, so scientists did not know how acidity in the region’s waters was trending.

Using ocean chemistry recorded in algae, researchers have now constructed a nearly 100-year history of acidity (pH) in the region. The analysis, published in Scientific Reports, shows that ocean acidification, seen around the world, has been delayed in the gulf.

NOAA budget spells out plans to reduce spending and abandon climate research

July 2, 2025 — A new budget document from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spells out in detail what many scientists and researchers both in and out of the federal government have feared since a White House budget proposal in the spring.

If approved by Congress, it would reduce NOAA’s expenses by 30%, roughly $2 billion, and the 12,000-member staff by 18%.

It would eliminate the agency’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and zero out funding for its climate, weather and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns and the ocean. That includes an office that helps support the pioneering carbon dioxide monitoring on Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, and another that supports the National Sea Grant program and its aquaculture research. Sea Grant is a 50-year-old federal university partnership that assists coastal communities and local economies with understanding, conserving and using coastal resources.

Read the full article at USA TODAY

The ocean is changing colors, researchers say. Here’s what it means.

June 20, 2025 — Warming waters are causing the colors of the ocean to change — a trend that could impact humans if it were to continue, according to new research.

Satellite data shows that ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Science.

The change in hue is being caused by shifting concentrations of a green pigment called chlorophyll, which is produced by phytoplankton, Haipeng Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper, told ABC News.

Phytoplankton are photosynthetic marine organisms. As algae, phytoplankton has photosynthetic pigments, which reflect green light and cause the waters around it to appear primarily green, Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the paper, told ABC News. Where phytoplankton are absent, the water appears blue.

Read the full article at ABC News

Scientists warn that the ocean is growing greener at poles

June 20, 2025 — The ocean is turning greener at the poles and bluer at the equator, and researchers say the small but mighty change in color spells danger, and fisheries will likely take the hit.

A tracked increase in vegetation cover, also known as greening, has been consistently recorded on land by scientists since the 1990s — meaning the average leaf cover across the planet’s surface has grown steadily, likely due to rising temperatures.

Using satellite images, the phenomenon has also been seen in the ocean, but inconsistent data on chlorophyll production thanks to the ocean’s sheer depth means studying greening rates sea-side is harder.

From 2003 to 2022, NASA satellite MODIS-Aqua traveled the entire Earth every two days, measuring light wavelength and gathering data nonstop.

Researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, conducted an ocean greening analysis, published June 19 in the journal Science, on the data in search of changes in the amount of chlorophyll, which signals the presence of aquatic ecosystem fundamental phytoplankton.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Study finds ocean acidification is more pervasive than previously thought

June 20, 2025 — New research by an international team of oceanographers has found that ocean acidification has significantly compromised 40% of the global surface ocean, and 60% of the subsurface ocean to a depth of 656 feet (200 meters).

This extent of acidification indicates there has been considerable declines in suitable habitats for important marine species that rely on dissolved calcium and carbonate ions to build their hard shells and skeletons. Impacted economically and ecologically important species include crabs, oysters, mussels and other bivalves, corals and small sea snails known as pteropods that form the base of food webs.

The finding by an international team that included scientists from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in Great Britain, NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, the Cooperative Institute for Marine Ecosystem Research at Oregon State University, and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland, was based on a detailed analysis of ocean carbon system observations, models and biological assessments. The research was published in the journal Global Change Biology as “Ocean Acidification: another planetary boundary crossed”.

Read the full article at the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program

Cooler Gulf of Maine Waters Could Benefit Lobster Fishing This Summer

June 19, 2025 — There is good news for lobster fishermen in the Northeast. NOAA scientists predict cooler bottom waters in the Gulf of Maine this spring and summer, potentially creating favorable conditions for fishing in the region’s most valuable fishery. For lobstermen who’ve weathered years of unpredictable conditions, this news could be a welcome relief.

The experimental seasonal forecast indicates that bottom temperatures are expected to drop 0.9 to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit below average, marking a significant shift for waters that warmed faster than almost anywhere else globally from 2004 to 2013.

Read the full article at Outdoor Hub

Progress and frustration mark the UN’s third Ocean Conference

June 17, 2025 — Delegates from around the world convened in Nice, France, last week to discuss a range of ocean priorities, including the implementation of a recently finalized “high seas treaty” to protect the two-thirds of the oceans that lie outside countries’ control.

It was the third United Nations Ocean Conference, a high-level forum meant to advance the U.N.’s sustainable development goal to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans.” This year’s co-hosts, France and Costa Rica, urged other countries to step up marine conservation efforts in light of overlapping ocean crises, from plastic pollution and ocean acidification to rising sea levels that are jeopardizing small island nations. António Guterres, the U.N.’s secretary-general, said in his opening remarks that oceans are “the ultimate shared resource” and that they should foster multilateral cooperation.

Whether the conference was a success depends on whom you ask. The most prominent outcome of the meeting was a flurry of voluntary and rhetorical commitments made by countries to conserve marine resources. Some of these, like France’s pledge to limit a destructive kind of fishing called bottom trawling, were criticized as insufficient. France had also promoted the conference as a sort of deadline for reaching 60 ratifications of the high seas treaty — a threshold needed for it to enter into force — but this didn’t happen, leading to disappointment among ocean advocates

On the other hand, experts said there were real signs of progress. Germany and the European Union pledged hundreds of millions of dollars toward marine conservation, for example, and 11 governments signed a new pledge to safeguard coral reefs. Nearly 20 countries ratified the high seas treaty over just a few days, bringing the total up to 50.

Angelique Pouponneau, the lead ocean negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, a negotiating bloc of 39 countries, said in a statement that the conference had been “a moment of both progress and reflection.” Former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, who also served as special envoy on climate under the Biden administration, noted “critical momentum to safeguard our planet.”

Read the full article at Grist

Responsible Fishery Management is a Powerful Tool to Conserve Our Ocean

June 16, 2025 — The following commentary was released by the At-sea Processors Association:

The new Ocean documentary provides a remarkable portrait of life beneath the waves. This World Ocean Day, it’s appropriate to follow the film’s gaze on climate change and destructive fishing – two major threats to the marine environment globally. Unfortunately, our most powerful and achievable tool to ensure fisheries are healthy for future generations—responsible fishery management—is entirely absent from the film’s narrative. Acknowledging and scaling up the implementation of responsible fishery management globally is an urgent priority we should unite to advance.

Fishing has provided people with food and jobs for millennia. Yet in the modern age, technological advancement has given humanity the tools to fish to excess. In the decades after World War II, numerous global fish stocks collapsed, and high-value marine habitat was degraded. In response, fishery scientists and managers joined with policymakers to develop solutions. The United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, finalized in 1995 by global experts, provides a clear roadmap for all who wish to ensure that fishing takes place sustainably.

The United States – and especially the Alaska Region – has led the world in demonstrating how responsible fishery management can be implemented. For almost five decades since passage of the U.S. Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) in 1976, Eastern Bering Sea groundfish stocks—including Alaska pollock, sablefish, Pacific cod and Alaska flatfish—have been carefully managed and harvested using highly precautionary science-based catch limits. Fish stocks have consistently remained healthy; tens of thousands of American families, many in remote communities, have been sustained by jobs in fish harvesting, processing, and support businesses; and billions of nutritious and affordable seafood meals have been provided to people around the world every single year.

Maintaining healthy target stocks is one half of the responsible fishery management challenge. The parallel task is to minimize harm to the broader marine ecosystem. The accidental harvest of non-target species (bycatch) and the disturbance of benthic habitat both take center stage in Ocean, and it’s absolutely true that both must be carefully regulated to prevent unacceptable impacts on the ocean environment.

In this area too, U.S. North Pacific fishery management leads the world. An evocative scene in the documentary shows 75% of a trawl tow being discarded. North Pacific trawl nets look profoundly different from this, thanks to the most effective bycatch avoidance techniques in the world. For example, APA’s Eastern Bering Sea Alaska pollock fleet discards less than 0.5% of the fish we catch, and we continue to improve our bycatch performance through the use of excluder technology on nets, the sharing of real-time bycatch data across the fleet, and the establishment of rolling “bycatch hotspot” area closures.

The Eastern Bering Sea’s ocean-bottom habitat, meanwhile, is conserved through extensive area-based closures, and is carefully monitored by scientists and managers for fishery impacts. Approximately 200 science-based conservation areas have been established throughout the U.S. North Pacific, usually through cooperation between scientists, managers and industry. Sixty-one percent of the region’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) has been closed year-round to bottom trawling. Further, the Essential Fish Habitat provisions of the MSA require extensive review of fishing’s habitat impacts every five years. Scientists and managers in the U.S. North Pacific have consistently confirmed through these exhaustive reviews that habitat impacts from fishing in the region are both temporary and minimal.

Remembering the broader context is also important. As we strive to sustainably feed the world’s eight billion people, there is simply no comparison between the environmental impact of responsibly managed fisheries and the terrestrial farming of animal protein. Natural habitat has been clear felled across the United States and around the world to create vast areas for intensive terrestrial food production. In Iowa, to take just one example, more than 85% of the natural habitat has been replaced by farmland. In the U.S. North Pacific, by contrast, the marine habitat remains overwhelmingly intact, with just 3.9% of the region’s benthic habitat estimated to be in a disturbed state as a result of fishing, which has occurred in the region over many decades and continues to provide food to the world and vital economic and community benefits to the region.

When it comes to climate change – the most acute long-term threat to marine ecosystem health – wild-capture seafood is by far the most climate-friendly choice of any animal protein. Put simply, in wild-capture fisheries the ocean ecosystem does the hard work of growing food without the carbon-intensive inputs that farms and aquaculture facilities require. Further, the size and scale of large fisheries like Eastern Bering Sea Alaska pollock lead to unmatched catch efficiency, further reducing the climate and habitat impacts that occur per meal produced. As a result, Alaska pollock has a carbon footprint of 3.77 kg CO2-eq per kg protein, compared with 12.5 for chicken, 20.83 for plant-based meat, and 115.75 for beef. Ocean referenced recent research suggesting that some fishing activity may lead to the release of carbon from the ocean floor into the atmosphere. While many scientific questions remain about this new theory, in the Eastern Bering Sea, where storms constantly churn the benthic habitat, it is clear that fishing is not responsible for meaningful benthic carbon releases.

As we take stock of Sir David Attenborough’s latest work, let’s focus on reforming poorly managed fisheries and ending destructive fishing practices globally. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that 23% of global fish landings come from a fishery operating at biologically unsustainable levels. This is unacceptable. Illegal and unregulated fishing in some countries and on the high seas are harming the marine environment. Serious work to sustain the marine life profiled in Ocean involves acting with urgency to address climate change, and redoubling our efforts to improve the management of more fisheries globally.

The experience of Alaska and many other regions proves that responsible fishery management works. The task before us is not to secure MPAs in locations and at a scale that would lead to massive displacement of fishers around the world from their historical fishing grounds, as the advocates who funded and produced Ocean have long argued. Rather, the scaling up of responsible fishery management globally is the clear opportunity we have in front of us for durable change.

Together, through serious action on climate and more effective fishery management globally, we can secure the benefits of productive fisheries and a healthy marine environment for generations to come.