November 12, 2026 — For commercial fishermen, a sudden fishery closure can mean losing an entire season’s income while bills keep coming. Vessel payments, insurance, moorage fees, and other operating expenses don’t disappear when a fishery shuts down, and federal disaster assistance can take years to reach the people who need it.
It’s a familiar problem across the industry, but Noah Oppenheim believes the conversation is finally shifting from identifying what’s broken to finding ways to fix it.
“The fact that conversations about enhanced risk management in commercial fisheries are all of a sudden happening in the industry, in Congress, and in the executive branch, that’s a first,” Oppenheim said in an interview with National Fisherman.
Oppenheim, principal of Homarus Strategies, will moderate a discussion on the issue at Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle on Nov. 20. The session, “Building a Real Safety Net: Risk Management for Commercial Fisheries,” will explore whether insurance programs modeled after those available to American farmers could provide commercial fishermen with a more reliable financial safety net.
For Oppenheim, the objective is to move the conversation beyond another discussion of the shortcomings of federal fishery disaster assistance. “We’re going to assume that we all know the fishery disaster process is a disaster. It’s broken,” he said.