Saving Seafood

How El Niño could threaten your favorite seafood for years to come

October 29, 2026 — Squid are shifting to cooler water, young salmon are struggling to find food sources, and concern is growing for Oregon’s $100 million Dungeness crab harvest as a powerful El Niño weather pattern heats up coastal ocean temperatures from California to the Pacific Northwest. Scientists expect the phenomenon to last for several months, leaving fishermen such as Phil Fogle scrambling.

Fogle, who owns two squid fishing boats based in the port of Anacortes, in Washington state, normally would keep fishing until foul weather sets in — his boats operate from Eureka, California, to Kodiak, Alaska. Instead, Fogle tied up his boats last week and furloughed his seven employees. The squid that normally inhabit coastal water have fled offshore for colder, deeper water that are harder to reach for smaller boats.

“Those little buggers are really affected by water temperature,” Fogle said about the squid. “It has been devastating to us.”

He said he’s losing about $50,000 a month.

Fogle said he’s waiting for the El Niño conditions to pass and hoping to get on the water again early next year.

This year’s El Niño, the strongest on record, has led temperatures off the Pacific Northwest coast to jump 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the average from 1991 to 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. El Niño’s warmth has arrived on top of an existing marine heat wave in the Gulf of Alaska, according to Steven Bograd, senior climatologist at NOAA.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

ALASKA: Alaska Area of Opportunity identification process to be supported through a NOAA online tool

October 29, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries and NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science recently released a new report with stakeholder input that was gathered across multiple workshops during the spring of 2026 in Anchorage, Juneau, and Kodiak, Alaska, U.S.A.

The report, titled the “Gulf of Alaska Aquaculture Atlas Rollout and Webtool Planning Workshop Series,“ asked industry professionals, including growers, Tribal representatives, researchers, state and federal agency staff, nonprofit organizations, fishermen, and community members, about the ways science-based planning and permitting tools will aid sustainable practices as the government rolls out Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (AOAs) in the state.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Pollock industry, Senate race and culture collide in a fight over fish

October 7, 2026 — Evon Waska’s fish camp was too quiet this summer.

“Well, this is my smokehouse,” he said, opening the door to the plywood structure at the water’s edge in Bethel, where he says his parents settled when they gave up their nomadic ways.

It’s next to empty salmon-drying racks and fish-cutting tables that have seen too few fish for many years running.

A few smoked king fillets still hang. Waska caught about 40 at the start of summer. That was a relief. Some years subsistence fishermen on the Kuskokwim River weren’t allowed to harvest any, and it’s worse on the Yukon. But Waska said he got only half of what his household needs.

His fish racks should be filled with silver salmon now. But the silver return was too weak to fish. So instead of getting more salmon in late August, his family was already dipping into what they put up for winter.

Waska, like a lot of people along the Kuskokwim River, say the problem is in the Bering Sea, with the trawl fleet. The trawlers are after pollock, but they are allowed to waste thousands of king and chum salmon, some bound for Western Alaska rivers like the Kuskokwim.

“They don’t close the trawlers,” Waska said. “They close me and my people first.”

Waska is up against a giant. Trawlers in the federal waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska catch nearly 3 billion pounds of Alaska pollock, the nation’s largest fishery by volume. They can tow nets as wide at the mouth as a football field and a quarter-mile in length.

It’s not just subsistence fishermen who are upset about bycatch — the other species those nets scoop up. Sport, charter and commercial fishermen are also boiling mad and demanding change. In Alaska’s tight U.S. Senate race, bycatch has become a flashpoint, and the race may turn on which candidate — Sen. Dan Sullivan or challenger Mary Peltola — is perceived as the most willing and able to rein in the the trawlers.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Study finds El Niño events can boost nutrients in Gulf of Alaska

September 23, 2026 — The Gulf of Alaska is particularly vulnerable to the effects of events like marine heatwaves and El Niños, which can devastate its lucrative fisheries. But a new study has found El Niños can offer some benefits to the Gulf of Alaska.

Élise Beaudin is a physical oceanographer at a research facility called Ocean Networks Canada in British Columbia, and a lead author on the study, which was published in the Journal of Physical Oceanography on Sept. 10. Her research focused on what’s called the Alaska subpolar gyre, which is basically a giant counterclockwise swirl of water, thousands of miles wide, that goes around the Gulf of Alaska and into the waters around eastern Russia.

She said she was interested in studying the subpolar gyre for two reasons. The Gulf of Alaska provides critical habitat for Alaska’s fisheries. And she said it’s also interesting because of the way water circulates.

“The center of the subpolar gyre in Alaska, is extremely depleted in nutrients, especially micronutrients,” Beaudin said.

Those nutrients, like iron, silicate, and nitrate, are essential for phytoplankton, which are the base of the food chain that feeds everything else in the ocean. Beaudin said the phytoplankton living in the nutrient-depleted areas survive because of eddies, which are smaller rotating swirls inside of the gyre.

Read the full article at KMXT

Sullivan’s trawl bycatch bill clears a U.S. Senate committee

September 17, 2026 — A bill that aims to reduce the pollock fleet’s bycatch of salmon, halibut and other species passed the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday.

Sen. Dan Sullivan is the sponsor of the Bycatch Reduction Act. He said it would tell the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council to change how it treats the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawlers, to limit their impact on the marine environment.

“This sets out timelines. It sets out standards,” he said in a phone interview. “It sets out direct action to reduce bycatch, to limit — and, in many ways, do away with — trawl gear contact with the seafloor, and setting clearer standards.”

The bill also reconstitutes a group from a 2022 Sullivan bill, the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force Act. Sullivan said it will give Alaskans a direct say in what the federal government studies.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Nine Species of Deep-Sea Sponges Discovered in Alaska

September 11, 2026 — Scientists have discovered nine new species of sponges in the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands. The specimens were collected during the Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s long-standing annual bottom trawl surveys, which monitor the condition of groundfish and shellfish stocks in Alaskan waters. For these sponge studies, researchers analyzed samples gathered during surveys dating back to 2012.

The new species were described across two recent scientific publications: four in one paper and five in the other. These discoveries raise the total number of known sponge species in Alaska to 232. The findings add to a growing body of knowledge about the richness of marine life in Alaskan waters. They also highlight the Aleutian Islands as a global hotspot for sponge biodiversity.

The studies also mapped sponge genetic codes, which contributes to a marine genetic library. This continues to build a robust catalog that enhances NOAA’s ability to detect species and estimate population abundances using non-invasive environmental DNA sampling.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

ALASKA: Record-breaking pink run surges into Sitka

August 26, 2026 — Sitka purse seiners broke the area’s single-day pink salmon harvest record twice this month, as a strong late run and increased fishing effort turned around what had initially looked like a difficult season.

According to an Aug. 20 report from Raven Radio, seiners in District 13 harvested 1.23 million pink salmon on Aug. 6, surpassing the previous single-day record of roughly 950,000 fish set in 2017.

Four days later, the fleet broke the record again, harvesting 1.28 million pink salmon on Aug. 10.

“We’ve just been seeing really strong harvests of pink salmon and really strong escapements, which was kind of unusual for an even year, and fairly unusual, given what’s been going on with pink salmon in the rest of the Gulf of Alaska,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Sitka area management biologist Aaron Dupuis told KCAW. “So it’s pretty special to have a good pink run in the Sitka area this year.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Deep sea mining in the Gulf of Alaska

August 13, 2026 — With China reportedly producing around 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth elements, and far ahead in processing technology, the U.S. and other countries are searching for new ways to meet demand, and deep sea mining on seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska is on the list of proposals. The Japanese press reported in July that experimental deep sea mining had successfully extracted rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium—all vital for fighter jet and missile guidance systems—from 6,000 feet below the surface.

In April of 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14285 “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is evaluating whether to advance a competitive lease sale for minerals on the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf. “We don’t know what impact deep sea mining could have on fisheries, but there is cause for concern,” says retired University of Alaska marine professor Rick Steiner, who now runs a consulting company called Oasis Earth.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Sullivan reintroduces sweeping bill targeting bycatch, seafloor impacts

July 8, 2026 — U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) has reintroduced the Bycatch Reduction Act, legislation that would expand federal efforts to reduce bycatch, limit seafloor impacts from trawl gear, improve fisheries monitoring and increase transparency in fishery management.

According to Sullivan’s office, the bill builds on recommendations from the Alaska Salmon Task Force, which was created through legislation he authored and signed into law in 2022.

The proposal would establish new standards and monitoring requirements designed to keep both midwater and bottom trawl nets off the seafloor, require proven salmon excluder devices on pollock vessels, invest in salmon tagging and genetic sampling, expand ecosystem research, and create a new flume tank testing facility to evaluate fishing gear under simulated ocean conditions. The bill also would reauthorize NOAA’s Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program and encourage fishermen to test new gear and technologies aimed at reducing bycatch and habitat impacts.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

North Pacific council to study new options to reduce bottom trawling

June 17, 2026 — Federal fisheries managers plan to consider new options in 2027 to reduce bottom contact of pelagic trawl gear on red king crab populations in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

Members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council assigned council staff during their June meeting in Vancouver, Wash., to develop a discussion paper on potential regulatory measures to reduce bottom contact of pelagic trawl gear in areas currently closed to non-pelagic trawl gear.

The goal is to reduce the uncertainty associated with unobserved crab mortality and to improve existing fishing practices, in light of depressed red king crab populations and changing ecosystems, council staff said.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman