Saving Seafood

Speed Limits for Ships Protect Endangered Right Whales From Vessel Strikes. Could the Animals Survive Without Them?

June 29, 2026 – -Even though whales take up a lot of space, they can be surprisingly stealthy in the water. Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America, knows firsthand how difficult it can be to spot one and avoid a collision.

When she’s steering a research boat, Asmutis-Silvia looks for specific types of ripples at the surface or spouts of water from a blowhole to signal that a whale is nearby. But even so, the animals can be unpredictable.

“They’re not out here paying attention to you,” she says. “Whales that are looking for food and eating are very focused. It’s probably the whale version of hangry!”

Recently, Asmutis-Silvia was slowly moving a boat she operates as part of a research project with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, having noticed signs of whales in the area. Suddenly, a North Atlantic right whale popped up just 30 feet ahead, off the boat’s bow. “That’s not atypical whale behavior for right whales,” Asmutis-Silvia says. “These animals do what they want.”

She had time to turn her vessel away from the mammal, because of her low speed, but many other cases don’t end so harmlessly. Whale strikes have been on the rise in areas along the East Coast, likely due to the growth of global shipping in the past few decades. Worldwide, vessels fatally hit an estimated 20,000 whales each year. Recent examples of dead whales washing ashore on New York and Delaware beaches have brought the toll of vessel strikes into the public eye.

Read the full article at Smithsonian Magazine

NOAA surveys East Coast fishing crews amid industry pressures

May 28, 2026 — Federal fisheries officials are once again heading to commercial fishing ports from Maine to North Carolina as part of NOAA Fisheries’ ongoing effort to better understand the economic and social realities facing working fishermen and crew members across the East Coast.

The 2026 Commercial Fishing Crew Survey, conducted through the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, launched this spring and will continue through the fall at ports throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

The voluntary and anonymous survey focuses on commercial fishing vessel crew members and hired captains, gathering information on demographics, working conditions, fishing practices, job satisfaction, economic concerns and views on fisheries management. According to NOAA, the survey can be completed in person, online, by phone or through the mail and typically takes about 10 minutes.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

FLORIDA: ‘It’s our resource’: Florida’s East Coast could see longest Red Snapper season since 2009 in 2026

February 13, 2026 — Florida’s Atlantic Coast could see the longest Red Snapper season since 2009 this year, if the federal government signs off on a plan to shift management of the fishery over to the state.

Charter Fishing Captain Adam Petnuch with Reel Dream Fishing Charters in St. Augustine has been fishing the Southern Atlantic for more than a decade, and not once in that span of time has he had the chance to see a full-length Red Snapper season.

“It’s a very good eating fish and the thing about it is the abundance. It is such an abundant source of fish for us over here,” Petnuch said.

Read the full article at Action News Jax

Messaging Mariners in Real Time to Reduce North Atlantic Right Whale Vessel Strikes

February 12, 2026 — Endangered North Atlantic right whales live in heavily trafficked waters along the U.S. East Coast. Their habitat often overlaps with shipping lanes and port and harbor entrances, which puts them at high risk for vessel strikes—a primary threat to the species. Collisions with large whales can also result in significant and costly damage to boats and injury to passengers. Now, NOAA and partners are using an existing maritime safety technology in a new way to reduce the risk of vessel strikes.

The Automatic Identification System transmits the location, speed, and other characteristics of vessels in real time for navigation safety purposes. All commercial vessels 65 feet or longer are required to carry AIS devices onboard. Together with our partners, we are building a speed limit alert network powered by AIS technology that delivers timely text messages to vessels traveling within important right whale habitats.

Most vessels 65 feet or longer are required by federal law to travel at 10 knots or less in designated locations—called Seasonal Management Areas—at certain times of the year. With this real-time messaging network, shore-based AIS transceiver stations can detect vessel speeds within Seasonal Management Areas. If a regulated vessel is traveling faster than 10 knots, it will receive an alert.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

More Republicans buck Trump on offshore wind

February 12, 2026 —  A growing number of House Republicans are openly questioning the Trump administration’s assertion that offshore wind projects pose a risk to national security.

Nine Republicans, led by House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino of New York, last month called on top Trump officials to brief lawmakers about their decision in December to halt construction of five nearly complete projects off the Atlantic coast.

Judges have ruled against the administration’s pause in all five cases, but many lawmakers see the stop-work orders as part of a concerted and ongoing attack on offshore wind and other renewable energy ventures.

Read the full article at E&E News

22 Right Whale Calves Born So Far This Winter

February 5, 2026 — An aerial survey of Cape Cod Bay conducted by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) on Jan. 10 found 33 North Atlantic right whales here — the highest number on a single day in January in the center’s 27 years of such surveys. Normally the whales are just starting to trickle into the area at this time of year, said Daniel Palacios, director of the center’s right whale ecology program.

“It was a surprise,” said Palacios. “There are good plankton resources in the bay right now, and that’s drawing them here earlier than usual.”

Over more than 40 years of research, the CCS has established that Cape Cod Bay is the greatest known aggregation point for the roughly 380 members of the endangered species. In the winter, more than half of the remaining population comes here to feed on dense patches of plankton, said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, who founded the center’s right whale ecology program after conducting the first successful whale disentanglement in 1984.

In the warmer waters between Florida and the Carolinas, calving season, which runs from mid-November through mid-April, has been good. Twenty-two calves have been born so far, compared to 11 in last winter’s season and 20 the year before.

The most recent calf to be identified was just off the coast of Flagler Beach, Fla. on Jan. 30, according to the New England Aquarium.

The sighting of so many calves is “a very positive sign,” Mayo said. “We should be encouraged. But this population, at less than 400 animals, is still in tough shape.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the right whale is in the midst of an “unusual mortality event” that began in 2017, when 17 whales are known to have died in one year.

There are only about 70 breeding females in the entire population, and the number of calves born per season can range dramatically, with the highest recorded number being 39 in 2009 and the lowest zero in 2018.

The average number of calves born from 1980 to 2022 was 16, so 22 calves is considered a good season. Nonetheless, population biologists at NOAA Fisheries have said that 50 or more calves need to be born every year for many years to reverse the species’ decline and set the stage for recovery.

The original cause of the right whales’ decline was whaling — the entire population was reduced to 100 or fewer animals off the coast of the U.S. and Canada in the early 1900s. An international ban on hunting all right whales went into effect in 1935, but the population has struggled to recover due to mortality and serious injury from vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

Trump’s offshore wind project freeze draws lawsuits from states and developers

January 8, 2026 — Offshore wind developers affected by the Trump administration’s freeze of five big projects on the East Coast are fighting back in court, with one developer saying its project will likely be terminated if they can’t resume by the end of next week.

Norwegian company Equinor and the Danish energy company Orsted are the latest to sue, with the limited liability companies for their projects filing civil suits late Tuesday. Connecticut and Rhode Island filed their own request on Monday seeking a preliminary injunction for a third project.

The administration announced Dec. 22 it was suspending leases for at least 90 days on the five offshore wind projects because of national security concerns. Its announcement did not reveal specifics about those concerns.

President Donald Trump has been hostile to renewable energy technologies that produce electricity cleanly, particularly offshore wind, and has instead prioritized oil, coal and natural gas that emit carbon pollution when burned.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Tuna meltdown

September 18, 2025 — For Marty Scanlon, president of the Blue Water Fishermen’s Association (BWFA), tuna fishing is a passion as much as a business. Since 1991, he has been running his 43-foot vessel, the Provider II, out of Long Island. But the business is getting rough.

By the time he gets into the Willie Etheridge Seafood dock in Wanchese, N.C., in August 2025, just ahead of Hurricane Erin, he and his crew are at their limit. A problem with the longline reel has forced them to haul back fifteen miles of gear by hand, and not for a lot of fish.

 “It took us two days to get the gear back,” says Scanlon, pointing to a pile of monofilament in a big fish box. “And it only took us a half an hour to unload.”

According to Scanlon, the number of East Coast U.S. tuna fishermen has dropped precipitously from 438 to 68 over the course of his career. The remaining fishermen have faced numerous challenges, among them cheap imports and uncertain and ambiguous regulations.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Hurricane Erin churns up dangerous waves and closes beaches along US East Coast

August 19, 2025 — Hurricane Erin churned slowly toward the eastern U.S. on Tuesday, stirring up treacherous waves that already have led to dozens of water rescues and shut down beaches along the coast in the midst of summer’s last hurrah.

While forecasters remain confident the center of the monster storm will remain far offshore, the outer edges are likely to bring damaging tropical-force winds, large swells and life-threatening rip currents into Friday.

Warnings about rip currents have been posted from Florida to the New England coast, and the biggest swells along the East Coast are expected over the coming two days. Rough ocean conditions already have been seen along the coast — at least 60 swimmers were rescued from rip currents Monday at Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington, North Carolina.

New York City closed its beaches to swimming on Wednesday and Thursday, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered three state beaches on Long Island to prohibit swimming through Thursday. Several New Jersey beaches also will be off-limits.

Read the full article at the Associated Press