Saving Seafood

Coast Guard seeks applicants for Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee

July 8, 2025 — The U.S. Coast Guard is accepting applications to fill 18 vacancies on the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee (NCFSAC), a federal advisory body that provides guidance on commercial fishing safety policy to the Department of Homeland Security.

Established under the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018 and later amended by the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, the NCFSAC represents a cross-section of stakeholders in the commercial fishing industry. The committee advises on regulations, equipment standards, training, and safety measures impacting fishing vessels and crews nationwide.

The Coast Guard said it is seeking a diverse slate of candidates to fill seats representing the commercial fishing industry, naval architecture, marine engineering, safety training, insurance, vessel manufacturing, vessel ownership, and the general public. Three of the 18 positions are designated for members of the public with relevant maritime or community experience and will serve as Special Government Employees, subject to federal ethics and disclosure requirements.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Inspector general says Coast Guard misses illegal fishing in US waters

June 24, 2025 — The Coast Guard only reached halfway toward its goals for intercepting illegal foreign fishing in U.S. waters during 2023-2024, as immigration enforcement and other missions absorbed more resources, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.

“Although the Coast Guard recognizes IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing as one of the world’s top maritime security threats, its low interdiction rates and limited enforcement hours show a significant gap between the severity of the threat and the level of commitment required to effectively address it,” according to the inspector general report issued June 6.

In 2023 and 2024, “the Coast Guard estimatedthat it spent $687 million of its appropriations combating IUU fishing. Based on these estimates, we calculated that the Coast Guard spent approximately $5.9 million per IUU fishing interdiction,” the Homeland Security analysts wrote.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

The Coast Guard suspends its search for the crew of a capsized fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska

December 3, 2024 — The search for five people believed to be aboard a fishing vessel that capsized in rough seas in the Gulf of Alaska has been suspended, the Coast Guard said Monday.

The search lasted nearly a day and covered more than 108 square nautical miles (370 square kilometers).

“We stand in sorrow and solidarity with the friends and family of the people we were not able to find over the past 24 hours,” Chief Warrant Officer James Koon, a search and rescue mission coordinator at Coast Guard Sector Southeast Alaska, said in a statement.

The Coast Guard began the search after the Wind Walker’s crew sent a Mayday call at 12:10 a.m. Sunday that the 50-foot (15-meter) boat was overturning off Point Couverden, southwest of Juneau. The Coast Guard tried to get more information as it mobilized a response, but the crew didn’t answer, according to a Coast Guard press release.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

 

North Pacific Patrols Again Document Widespread Illegal Fishing

November 4, 2024 — The waters of the North Pacific continue to be hotspots for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, report the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard at the conclusion of more than two months of patrols. They are reporting the harvesting of shark fins continues unabated, as are criminal activities largely masterminds by dark fleet vessels.

The annual multinational mission known as Operation North Pacific Guard included patrolling the waters both at sea, in the air, as well as through satellite observations. They report it has once again exposed the deeply rooted menace of IUU.

The mission, which is led by Canada and brings together partners including the U.S., Japan, and Korea, saw Canadian fishery officers and crew aboard the multipurpose coast guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier patrol over 20,000 kilometers of North Pacific waters. During the mission, they conducted inspections of 15 fishing vessels and found illegally harvested shark fins, evidence of fishing during a closed season, and unreported catch. They also documented instances of marine pollution.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Captain blamed for fatal capsizing of F/V Mary B II

June 20, 2024 — The United States Coast Guard completed their investigation into the loss of the commercial fishing vessel Mary B II on the Yaquina Bay Bar near Newport, Oregon, on January 8, 2019. After convening with the Board of Investigation, the Coast Guard announced that the capsizing was primarily the owner/ operator’s fault.

Captain Stephan Biernacki, 50, was from Barnegat Township, N.J., and was crossing the Bay Bar when the vessel capsized, causing the loss of the boat and its entire crew. He had fished on the east coast off from New Jersey but was new to Dungeness fishing in Oregon. The Coast Guard had reported that the Mary B II had faced seas of 14 to 16 feet, with some waves breaking as tall as 20 feet. They had tried to direct the crew as they noticed them approaching the bar, but it had been too late, and the conditions were not forgiving.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA making vessel traffic data more accessible to public

April 28, 2023 — Escalating debates over siting offshore wind energy projects has made stakeholders reliant on Coast Guard vessel traffic data to scope out potential conflicts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been making improvements and new online tools to open that knowledge to a wider public.

The Automatic Identification System that tracks vessel movements with transponders on ships has helped create an “AIS database of 30 billion-plus vessel locations has become the go-to resource for maritime planners and ocean geospatial tech experts,” according to a recent summary from NOAA.

That data is a base for a NOAA website, MarineCadastre.gov . Cadastre is the ancient system of metes-and-bounds surveying of real estate on land.

For the ocean, NOAA developed the tool AccessAIS to help users access AIS data and more from MarineCadastre.gov on birds, economics, boundaries, federal regulations and other factors in planning.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

3 unresponsive people pulled from water amid Coast Guard search for missing fishing trip party off New England coast

April 20, 2023 — The U.S. Coast Guard said it found three unresponsive people in the waters off New England Thursday evening, a day after four people went missing after they set sail on a fishing trip.

The Coast Guard said it’s still searching for the fourth passenger as of Thursday evening. The status of the people who were found in the water was not immediately available.

Michael Sai and three unidentified passengers departed Hampton, New Hampshire, in a 17-foot white center console boat, according to the Coast Guard.

Read the full article at ABC News

A Cook Shortage Threatens To Sink U.S. Coast Guard Operations

November 1, 2022 — In a reminder that high-tech militaries are only as strong as their weakest supporting link, a long-standing cook shortage threatens to sideline the U.S. Coast Guard.

Newly recruited to the high-tech, great-power struggle in the Western Pacific, the Coast Guard is in a struggle for trained workers. But rather than focus solely on waging a bare-knuckle labor fight to keep elite operations specialists, electronics technicians, cyber operators, and other glamorous workers in the fleet, the Coast Guard is also paying big money to recruit and retain cooks, or, in Coast Guard vernacular, “culinary specialists.”

The Coast Guard’s cook shortage is a full-fledged readiness crisis.

Read the full article at Forbes

China fishing fleet defied U.S. in standoff on the high seas

November 1, 2022 — This summer, as China fired missiles into the sea off Taiwan to protest House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, a much different kind of geopolitical standoff was taking shape in another corner of the Pacific Ocean.

Thousands of miles away, a heavily-armed U.S. Coast Guard cutter sailed up to a fleet of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing boats not far from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. Its mission: inspect the vessels for any signs of illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing.

Boarding ships on the high seas is a perfectly legal if little-used tool available to any sea power as part of the collective effort to protect the oceans’ threatened fish stocks.

But in this case, the Chinese captains of several fishing boats did something unexpected. Three vessels sped away, one turning aggressively 90 degrees toward the Coast Guard cutter James, forcing the American vessel to take evasive action to avoid being rammed.

“For the most part they wanted to avoid us,” said Coast Guard Lt. Hunter Stowes, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer on the James. “But we were able to maneuver effectively so that we were safe the entire time.”

Still, the high-seas confrontation represented a potentially dangerous breach of international maritime protocol, one the U.S. sees as a troubling precedent since it happened on the Coast Guard’s first-ever mission to counter illegal fishing in the eastern Pacific.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

To Expand U.S. Reach, Station a Coast Guard Cutter at American Samoa

July 26, 2022 — Regardless of prognostications of future conflict it is clear that the history of the 21st century will be written in the Indo-Pacific. Accordingly, as the United States steams into in an increasingly turbulent maritime security environment, it should not discount harvesting “easy wins” in the region. Compared to the marquee U.S. military installations at Diego Garcia, Yokosuka, or Guam, American Samoa is a U.S. territory that evokes images of idyllic island life rather than strategic competition.

However, by considering American Samoa through the lens of strategic competition, a military installation manned by the U.S. Coast Guard is an easy step to demonstrate commitment in the region that makes imminent sense for several reasons. Due to the sheer distances involved in the Pacific — the closest Coast Guard installations are from Hawaii (2,260 nautical miles) and Guam (3,120 nautical miles) — current sustained operations in region are necessarily expeditionary.

Establishing a Coast Guard installation in American Samoa would lengthen the reach of the Coast Guard’s highly capable Sentinel class cutters, galvanizing partnerships throughout the Southern Pacific. With increasing concerns surrounding illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUUF), the law enforcement presence and know-how of the U.S. Coast Guard will be a boon to safeguarding erosion of geographic and economic sovereignty of island nations in the Southern Pacific.

This approach dovetails with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, which calls for “Build[ing] Connections Within and Beyond the Region.” Notably, the U.S. Coast Guard is one of the few government agencies called out by name in the strategy. One of the  great contributions and strengths of the Coast Guard are the multitude of unique service and agency relationships and bi-lateral agreements it shares with international partners. . Expanding Coast Guard presence in the Southern Pacific has the potential to enhance dozens of bilateral and multi-lateral relationships for the United States while bolstering maritime security in the region.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive