Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska salmon harvests near 185 million fish

September 11, 2025 — Commercial harvesters delivered nearly 185 million salmon to processors through Sept. 9, with all five species exceeding 80% of the annual projects as the season nears its end.

Coho harvests stood at over 2 million fish, up from 1.7 million a week earlier and were expected to continue for a few more weeks, although weekly harvest of all other species has declined in line with past harvest timing, said Simon Marks, who compiles weekly in-season harvest reports for McKinley Research Group on behalf of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.  Marks’ in-season reports for the year concluded on Sept. 9.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Environmentalists fail to prove Oregon dam kills coho salmon

August 22, 2025 — While a controversial southern Oregon dam may delay the migration of a threatened species of salmon, the impact isn’t significant enough to violate federal environmental laws, a federal judge in Portland ruled on Thursday.

“This court concludes that plaintiffs have not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant is liable for ‘take’ of Oregon Coast coho salmon under the Endangered Species Act,” U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut wrote in the 35-page findings of fact and conclusions of law.

A coalition of environmental conservation groups and fisheries organizations led by WaterWatch of Oregon sued the Winchester Water Control District in 2020, accusing the district of violating the Endangered Species Act through its operation of the Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River. The groups argued the dam causes illegal take of Oregon Coast coho salmon by blocking access to spawning habitat and attracting fish to impassable areas of the dams with leaks.

“This is a disappointing decision, but it doesn’t change the fact that coho salmon are listed under the Endangered Species Act and Winchester Dam needs to come out,” Jim McCarthy, WaterWatch’s southern Oregon program director, said in a statement. “It’s a flawed and outdated dam and the court recognized the dam has significant issues. Our campaign to remove the dam continues.”

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

ALASKA: Alaska salmon harvest tops to 129 million fish

August 15, 2025 — Alaska’s 2025 commercial salmon harvest reached over 129 million fish through Aug. 12, with sockeye, keta and coho catches appearing on pace to reach total annual projections.

Those projected 2025 harvests would add up to 214.6 million salmon, including over 138 million pink, 52.9 million sockeye, 20.8 million keta, 2.3 million coho and 144,000 kings.

Data compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game showed the statewide pink harvest at 62.3 million fish, followed by 51.3 million sockeyes, 14.5 million chum, 888,000 coho and 150,000 king salmon.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

A single dry winter decimated California’s salmon and trout populations

April 4, 2025 — A single severely dry winter temporarily, but dramatically, altered the ranges of three fishes — Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead trout — in California’s northern waterways.

In a new study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists found that the unusually dry winter of 2013-2014 caused some salmon and steelhead to temporarily disappear from individual tributaries and even entire watersheds along the northern California coast.

“California is at the southern end of the range for several species of salmon and trout, and because of a whole host of impacts, from colonization and engineered control of western rivers to climate change, these populations have been decimated,” said study lead author Stephanie Carlson, the A.S. Leopold Chair in Wildlife Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Our findings provide a glimpse into how an individual extreme event can trigger the widespread and sudden collapse of multiple populations and species and potentially result in longer term range shifts.”

During California’s historic multi-year drought of 2012-2016, the 2013-2014 winter was remarkable for having both very little rain and an extremely late start to the rainy season. By the time the first large rainstorms arrived in late January and early February 2014, many streams and rivers in Northern California were very low, and in some, the mouths had dried up completely, preventing salmon and steelhead from completing their annual voyages upriver to spawn.

The study examined how the drought affected Chinook salmon, coho salmon and steelhead trout, all part of the genus known as “salmonids,” in 13 coastal watersheds ranging from Marin to Humboldt counties. While all three fish species were impacted, Chinook salmon were able to cope by shifting their breeding activities downstream. However, fish monitoring data from the summer of 2014 revealed that steelhead trout had been eliminated from a number of individual tributaries, and coho salmon disappeared entirely from three coastal watersheds.

Read the full article at UC Berkeley 

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