Saving Seafood

Endangered California Coho Salmon Experience Record-Breaking Spawning Season on Mendocino Coast

March 5, 2025 — Last winter, endangered Central California Coast coho salmon (CCC coho) returned to Mendocino Coast rivers and streams in the highest numbers since monitoring began 16 years ago. Monitoring led by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to track their population status estimated more than 15,000 adult CCC coho returned to spawn during the 2023–24 season. The Ten Mile and Noyo rivers exceeded recovery targets set by NOAA for delisting CCC coho under the Endangered Species Act, and the Big and Garcia rivers experienced record returns.

While the overall numbers remain low compared to the species’ past abundance, NOAA scientists are excited by the results.

“I remember in the 1990s monitoring streams where water temperatures were too hot for CCC coho and lacking in structure, and I thought they would never come back in my lifetime,” says NOAA San Joaquin River Branch Chief Jonathan Ambrose. “I’ve been at NOAA Fisheries for 25 years, and we’ve changed the trajectory for CCC coho salmon. A lot of people think it’s too late—it’s too hard to bring back endangered species. This is a prime example of why it’s not too late or too hard.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

NEW YORK: NY food bank netted huge haul of 13,000 fresh salmon. The catch? The fish were alive

January 30, 2025 — A New York food bank was offered a huge donation of fresh fish this month — but it came with a catch.

LocalCoho, a soon-to-close salmon farm in the small upstate city of Auburn, wanted to give 40,000 pounds of coho salmon to the Food Bank of Central New York, a mother lode of high-quality protein that could feed thousands of families.

But the fish were still alive and swimming in the farm’s giant indoor tanks. The organizations would need to figure out how to get some 13,000 salmon from the water and then have them processed into frozen fillets for distribution to regional food pantries.

And they’d need to do it fast, before the business closed for good. LocalCoho is ceasing operations this Friday.

Thanks to dozens of food pantry volunteers willing to help staffers scoop up the salmon, the team was able to empty the tanks in a matter of weeks and cold pack tons of fish for shipment to a processor.

“The fact that we only had weeks to execute this really ratcheted up the intensity and the anxiety a little bit,” said Brian McManus, the food bank’s chief operations officer. “I knew that we had the will. I knew we had the expertise.”

Tackling food waste has been a daunting challenge for years both in the U.S. and around the world. More than one-third of the food produced in the U.S. is never eaten and much of it ends up in landfills.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

Skin cell discovery could help Atlantic salmon fend off sea lice

August 16, 2024 — Scientists at the Institute of Aquaculture are central to a study that could hold the key to improving Atlantic salmon’s resistance to sea lice. The parasites—which feed on the fish’s skin and fins, causing open wounds that can lead to infection—reduce the market value of farmed fish and can have knock-on impacts on wild salmon populations.

Various treatments have been developed to tackle  infestations in Atlantic salmon aquaculture—which costs the industry more than £700m a year—but these are often costly and ineffective. They can also be damaging to the environment and negatively affect animal welfare.

The new study reveals insights into how coho salmon—a cousin of Atlantic salmon—fight off the parasites, and it could pave the way for new genetic approaches. The findings are published in the journal BMC Biology.

Findings show a type of skin cell—known as keratinocyte—plays a key role in triggering localized swelling that helps coho salmon kill and remove sea lice.

Read the full article at phys.org

US acknowledges Northwest dams have devastated the region’s Native tribes

June 19, 2024 — The U.S. government on Tuesday acknowledged, for the first time, the harmful role it has played over the past century in building and operating dams in the Pacific Northwest — dams that devastated Native American tribes by inundating their villages and decimating salmon runs while bringing electricity, irrigation and jobs to nearby communities.

In a new report, the Biden administration said those cultural, spiritual and economic detriments continue to pain the tribes, which consider salmon part of their cultural and spiritual identity, as well as a crucial food source.

The government downplayed or accepted the well-known risk to the fish in its drive for industrial development, converting the wealth of the tribes into the wealth of non-Native people, according to the report.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Fisheries managers announce first 5 openers of 2024 Kuskokwim salmon season

May 28, 2024 — With another heavily restricted salmon fishing season just around the corner on the Kuskokwim River, federal managers have announced the first round of June gillnet opportunities for federally-qualified subsistence users.

All chinook, chum, and coho salmon caught may be retained during the following Kuskokwim River mainstem openers:

Set gillnet:

• Monday, June 3, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

• Thursday, June 6, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

• Monday, June 10, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Read the full article at KYUK

EPA to review chemical in car tires known to kill salmon

December 12, 2023 — The ancestral land of the Puyallup tribe, located outside of Tacoma, Washington, is one of America’s most urban reservations.

Their land is crisscrossed by heavy, interstate traffic that has a direct correlation to the dwindling of their most precious resource: salmon.

“All of the pollutants that are discharged along the freeway can end up in this water body, which then flows into Commencement Bay, and this is why it’s a big issue for the tribe, as well as fisheries and fisheries restoration,” said Russ Ladley, the director of fisheries for the tribe.

His team raises and monitors fish populations across the reservation — a resource which its importance is hard to put into words.

For decades, tribal Vice Chair Sylvia Miller says the Puyallup people have watched wild populations of coho and other salmon decrease to a mere percentage of what they have been historically.

“We used to be able to provide for our whole families, for all of our families, be it smoking, canning, and, and providing daily fish to our families, and that’s not so anymore,” said Miller.

Read the full article at KOAA

Threatened Coho Salmon at Risk Due to Federal Mismanagement, Groups Allege

March 9, 2023 — A few weeks ago, federally threatened coho salmon swam up the Klamath River, spawned and laid egg nests. But some of these nests, or redds, holding as many as 4,000 eggs, may never hatch, owing to reduced water levels in the river.

It’s the result of a severe water management bungling, say critics, by the Bureau of Reclamation, which controls how much water flows from Upper Klamath Lake into the river.

“My jaw is dropping right now at the way things are being managed,” said Michael Belchik, senior water policy analyst employed by the Yurok Tribe.

Tribal nations and commercial fishing groups argue the agency violated the Endangered Species Act when it reduced river flows in mid-March below a minimum level set in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biological opinion, a series of recommendations and requirements meant to help the salmon recover and ensure river management decisions don’t push the species to the brink of extinction. The bureau blamed years of drought in the Klamath Basin.

The Yurok Tribe and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations have alerted the Bureau of Reclamation that they intend to sue.

Read the full article at KQED

Federal approvals clear way for Klamath River dam removals

January 18, 2023 — A decades-long effort to remove four dams on the lower Klamath River in California and Oregon would be the largest dam removal in the world. The dam removals would reopen access to more than 400 miles of habitat for threatened coho salmon, Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, and other threatened native fish.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Nov. 17 gave final approval for the surrender of utility licensing for the dams, clearing the way for their removal as part of the restoration effort.

NOAA is one of many partners collaborating to build a network of restored habitat that can support these species once the dams are removed. NOAA, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, and Trout Unlimited have released a detailed plan for restoring habitat in a key portion of the watershed.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Disaster aid for Alaska crab, salmon fisheries in spending bill

December 23, 2022 — Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo on Dec. 16 announced approval of fishery disaster requests for crab and salmon fisheries in Alaska and Washington over the last several years.

The declarations are for poor or closed Alaska harvests going back to 2020. They cover failures in the crab fisheries for this season and last season, including the recently canceled Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red crab harvests, as well as the closure of king crab fishing in Norton Sound in 2020 and 2021, the collapse of chum and coho harvests in the Kuskokwim River area, the poor salmon returns in the Chignik area in 2021, and low returns of pink and coho salmon om the Copper River and Prince William Sound areas in 2020.

For Washington, fishery disaster declarations were approved for the 2020 ocean salmon fisheries and the 2019 Columbia River, Willapa Bay, and Puget Sound Salmon fisheries.

“America’s fisheries are a critical part of our national economy and directly impact our local communities when disasters occur,” Raimondo said. “These determinations are a way to assist those fishing communities with financial relief to mitigate impacts, restore fisheries and help prevent future disasters.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

La Niña weather conditions in NW mean healthy coho salmon harvest

September 19, 2022 –Cooler water in the Pacific Ocean leading to rebounding fish numbers means a healthy harvest of coho salmon this year, said state and tribal fisheries officials.

The fish benefited from La Niña conditions out at sea.

“The coho returns this year at Grays Harbor is one of the biggest ones we’re expecting in a long time,” said Mark Baltzell, lead for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Salmon and Steelhead Fisheries Management. “In general, we can chalk it up to good freshwater conditions and good ocean conditions when those fish went out.”

Read the full article at The Oregonian