Saving Seafood

Chinook salmon in decline, worsened by Bering Sea heatwave a decade ago: study

July 30, 2026 — Yukon River Chinook salmon numbers have been in a decline for decades. Despite efforts to help the population recover, it has dropped nearly 90 per cent since the 1980s.

Now, a new study from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says a four-year heatwave in the Bering Sea that started about a decade ago has been connected to a more recent drop in population.

Curry Cunningham, one of the co-authors of the study and an associate professor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said researchers have noticed two periods of decline in the Chinook salmon population between 2003 and 2023.

Cunningham said before 2013, the salmon experienced a short decline followed by a few years of recovery.

But by 2016, conditions started to change again.

“That’s led to this very depressed state we currently find ourselves in,” Cunningham said. “[It] seems to be associated in time, at least with the onset of this marine heat wave that we saw in the eastern Bering Sea.”

Read the full article at CBC News

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Bay commercial salmon fishery opens after 5-year hiatus

July 30, 2026 — Dozens of ocean-going skiffs have been busy unfurling gill nets along the shores of Kuskokwim Bay. But the catches haven’t been headed to fish camps. Instead, the salmon are quickly bled, put on ice, and offloaded onto vessels bobbing in the waters in front of Quinhagak and Goodnews Bay.

If the fishery is successful, an at-sea processor with hundreds of thousands of pounds of frozen, mostly sockeye, salmon will return to Washington state to bring the catch to market.

According to Larry Strunk, a founding member of the Independent Fishermen of Quinhagak Cooperative, local permit holders could earn upwards of $15,000 each by fishing the openers.

“We have some fishermen that have already been paid over $10,000 this month,” Strunk said.

But as of July 28, Strunk said that diminishing sockeye numbers and logistical issues have spelled the end of this year’s fishery, just three weeks after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game opened it.

Read the full article at KYUK

NOAA Fisheries highlights challenges in applying MMPA to foreign fisheries, seeks suggestions

July 30, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries recently said a law requiring it to ban imports from foreign fisheries that don’t align with U.S. marine mammal protections has been a useful tool in reducing bycatch but admitted it is very difficult to execute.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) has long required U.S. commercial fishers to take steps to reduce marine mammal bycatch, but a similar requirement to ban imports from foreign fisheries that do not take action to reduce marine mammal bycatch has not been consistently enforced. Amid growing pressure from conservation groups, in 2016, NOAA Fisheries finalized a rule laying out how it would assess those foreign fisheries. Under the rule, NOAA Fisheries would conduct a comparability finding for every single foreign fishery to ensure it met U.S. standards for protecting marine mammals and reducing bycatch. Those denied a comparability finding would be banned from exporting their products to U.S. markets.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

OREGON: Oregon’s Newest Food Trail Highlights Local Seafood and the People Who Catch It

July 29, 2026 — From dock to plate, the Oregon Coast Seafood Trail puts the people behind the catch at the center of every meal. While much of the seafood consumed in Oregon comes from outside the country, Oregon’s newest trail highlights where you can enjoy Oregon-landed seafood that directly supports local fisheries. The trail guides travelers to vetted eateries, restaurants, seafood markets, food carts and dockside retailers that prioritize local seafood.

Central to the trail is the idea of “Oregon-landed” seafood, meaning the catch was delivered to a port in Oregon. Oregon’s fisheries are among the most sustainably managed in the world, with species like pink shrimp, albacore tuna, groundfish and Dungeness crab certified for responsible harvest. Additional local species — including Pacific halibut, salmon, oysters, clams and sea vegetables — round out the diversity of Oregon’s coastal waters and ensure every meal reflects the region’s bounty.

Each stop along the trail offers a window into the working waterfronts that sustain coastal communities. A dynamic map helps travelers sort stops by region, business type, seasonal events and more. The trail allows visitors to time their trip with the commercial crab season, albacore tuna runs or opportunities to buy directly from the docks. Along the way, visitors can explore coastal eateries, seafood markets and other businesses where transparency, sustainability and local sourcing are part of the story.

Read the full article at South Sound

ALASKA: Bristol Bay honors 75th anniversary of the end of commercial sailboat fishery

July 29, 2026 — Diesel-powered boats fish Bristol Bay’s waters by the hundreds, but it wasn’t always that way.

Motorized fishing vessels were once banned in Bristol Bay. And in their place, sailboats dominated the commercial fishery until the early 50s. The late Harvey Samuelson was one fisherman who sailed for salmon. His quotations used in this story are from a 2005 interview that aired on KDLG in a Bristol Bay oral history program called “Our Story.”

“We didn’t have no reels or anything like that,” Samuelson told KDLG at the time. “It was all manhandling wooden corks – it’d get awful heavy. Now you’ve got plastic floats, corks.”

Samuelson said without a motorized vessel, the job was not easy.

“Sailing was a lot of fun,” he said. “But to make a living in a sailboat was sort of tough.”

Tim Troll is the creator of “Our Story,” who interviewed Samuelson. He’s also director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust and author of the book, Sailing for Salmon. The commercial sockeye fishery used to be federally managed, and Troll says the US Fish & Wildlife Service finally allowed power boats to fish in 1951.

Read the full article at Alaska Pubic Media

Are offshore wind turbines changing Jonah crab behavior?

July 29, 2026 — Researchers at the University of Rhode Island (URI) are studying whether offshore wind turbines are changing the movement and feeding behavior of Jonah crabs, work they say could have implications for fisheries management and future offshore wind development.

According to ecoRI, first-year URI Ph.D. student Emmanuel Oyewole is using isotopic analysis to determine whether Jonah crabs found around offshore wind turbines are migrating from traditional fishing grounds or spending their entire lives at turbine sites. The research is being conducted with Kelton McMahon, an associate professor of oceanography at URI.

“It’s really, really important for understanding the impact of these wind farms on biodiversity, on ecosystem structure and function, and on fisheries production,” McMahon told ecoRI.

The study builds on years of research showing that offshore wind turbine foundations can act as artificial reefs, supporting algae, coral and other marine life that create habitat for a range of species.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Opinion: Why targeting one fishery puts Alaska’s seafood economy at risk

July 29, 2026 — Alaska’s commercial fishing economy works because of a simple truth: it is built on interdependence.

Like a three-legged stool, the state’s seafood economy depends on three connected pillars: fishermen who harvest responsibly, processors who transform that harvest into marketable products, and the coastal communities whose infrastructure, workforce, and local economies make it all possible.

Remove any one of those legs, and the entire system becomes unstable. That is why proposals to dismantle major parts of Alaska’s seafood economy are not isolated fishery debates. They are statewide economic questions.

Increasingly, public rhetoric around trawling has been reduced to simplistic slogans and social media talking points that ignore both the scale of Alaska’s seafood economy and the complex systems that sustain it. Some have advanced sweeping calls to “end trawling” without acknowledging what those policies would actually mean for Alaska communities.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA Report Finds Gulf of Maine Warming Slowed for Now, but Ecosystem Remains Unstable

July 28, 2026 — Maine’s fishing ports are doing well for now, but climate change is destabilizing the Gulf of Maine, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest “State of the Ecosystem” report for New England waters. Federal scientists presented the report to the New England Fishery Management Council in April, and published it online last week.

They found that some Maine fishing ports are growing busier, likely driven by the high price of lobster. Stonington, Harpswell and Friendship all see more activity now than they did roughly 20 years ago.

And 2025, like 2024, offered slightly cooler water temperatures after more than a decade of rapid and record-breaking warming in the Gulf of Maine. But the scientists predict that temperatures will warm again this fall, and will continue to rise long-term as the burning of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

To weather these ongoing changes, fishermen and their communities need to diversify their businesses, experts say.

“Things don’t look particularly stable either in terms of the fishery or the ecosystem,” said Joseph Caracappa, a research biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center who edited the report. “We’re seeing big changes that are sweeping across the ecology of the system and fisheries. Even socially, culturally — how communities are structured, where people are fishing, who’s actually doing the fishing.”

This annual report includes contributions from more than 100 scientists across the Northeast. NOAA has had to make do with fewer resources as the federal government’s priorities have changed under the second Trump administration, but otherwise the report has been prepared and published as usual, Caracappa said. And in fact, this latest report debuted a new section dedicated to forecasting ocean conditions in the year ahead.

Read the full article at U.S. News

MAINE: Maine lobstermen push to expand restricted fishing zone

July 28, 2026 — Small-scale lobstermen fishing out of Jonesport, Beals and Jonesboro are backing a proposal to expand a protected fishing zone in Englishman Bay, aiming to keep buoyed gear clear of long commercial trawls.

The Lobster Zone A Council voted unanimously last week to advance the plan, which would push the boundary of a restricted area 3 miles farther out to federal waters on its western edge, while leaving the eastern border unchanged, The Maine Monitor reported. Under current rules established in a 2011 agreement, the zone limits fishermen to buoyed lines carrying up to four traps; the new proposal would allow up to five traps per line inside the expanded area.

The change would also bar vessels running heavier gear — trawls of 10 to 20 traps anchored with large balloons — from fishing the expanded western zone.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay comes off decade of historic runs with moderate and early returns in 2026

July 28, 2026 — Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon run is coming to a close, and it just surpassed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s pre-season forecast of 44 million fish.

The thing that stands out most this year was that early run timing, said Curry Cunningham, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and part of a team that creates pre-season and in-season forecasts for the commercial fishery.

“If we look at the large-run-size years in Bristol Bay, we’ve seen generally since about 2015 they’ve been predominantly on time,” Cunningham said.

The last two years have bucked that trend, he said.

“In 2025 and this year in 2026, we’ve seen earlier run timing to Bristol Bay,” he said. “So a bit of a shift back towards run timings we hadn’t seen in quite a while.”

One of the variables that correlates most strongly with run timing is the extent of sea ice in the late spring, Cunningham said. Bristol Bay sockeye tend to return earlier during years with more sea ice in May.

This year’s run was about three days earlier than the long-term average, according to Cunningham, with a midpoint around July 3 or 4. While three days might seem like a small difference, he said it can have big impacts.

“In Bristol Bay, where the vast majority of the run comes through and arrives inshore over the course of two or three weeks, it actually makes a huge difference,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media