Saving Seafood

Shark finning, endangered species found in high seas boardings

August 11, 2026 — Enforcement officers have finished their deployment with Operation North Pacific Guard, the annual multinational patrol that polices illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in international waters of the North Pacific.

Officers from NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement patrolled more than 8,000 nautical miles aboard the Canadian Coast Guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier, sailing with fishery officers from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Fisheries Agency of Japan. Working under authorities granted by international law, the crew conducted dozens of boardings and inspections of foreign fishing vessels and documented violations of conservation and management measures including shark finning, possession of endangered species and failure to accurately report catch, according to NOAA.

Suspected violations were referred confidentially to the flag states of the vessels involved and to the relevant regional fisheries management organizations for investigation. Under RFMO procedures, flag states handle the investigations and any penalties; sanctions can be reviewed by the RFMOs and, for the most serious cases, can include a complete ban on fishing.

“The dedication of our officers ensures that sustainable fishing practices are upheld on a global scale,” said Benjamin Cheeseman, assistant director of NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement, Alaska Division. “Their work on the high seas directly protects the integrity of the oceans and the livelihoods of honest fishermen back home.”

NOAA did not release a violation count. DFO, which led the shipboard patrol, said in its own Aug. 6 announcement that the integrated crew aboard the Sir Wilfrid Laurier monitored several hundred fishing vessels, conducted 30 high-seas inspections and interacted with more than 500 crew members over roughly two months, turning up 52 potential violations. Those included shark finning and the use of prohibited gear to take sharks, misreporting of catch, bycatch and discards — including prohibited species — and multiple failures to use seabird protection measures while setting gear.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Canadian-Led Operation Reveals Scope of Illegal Fishing in North Pacific

August 7, 2026 — A Canadian-led operation aimed at cracking down on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has again exposed how the vast North Pacific continues to be a hotspot for criminal activity that poses a major threat to fish populations, marine environments and global seafood supply chains.

Following the completion of the annual multinational mission known as Operation North Pacific Guard (Op. NPG), which involved more than two months of patrolling North Pacific waters at sea, in the air and by satellite, the reality is that IUU fishing remains a deeply rooted menace.

The mission, which is led by Canada and brings together a range of partners including the U.S., Japan and Korea, saw Canadian fishery officers and crew aboard the multipurpose coast guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier patrol more than 23,000 kilometers of North Pacific waters.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

WASHINGTON: Rise of the Black Cod, Once seldom sought, sablefish becomes a best seller in Ilwaco

August 3, 2026 — A once seldom-sought deepwater fish is rapidly rising to the top of local seafood demand.

Sablefish — also known as black cod, butterfish, skil, beshow or coalfish — are a deepwater species native to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. They are a tasty source of protein, rich in omega-3 fatty acids and fetch a high price in local markets.

“Black cod is the thing we’re really bringing in right now,” said Eryn Domeyer, director of operations of Tre-Fin Seafood Market, now in their fourth year of operation at 213 First Ave. in Ilwaco. “It’s kind of unlike anything else — it’s incredible.”

Going deep

Sablefish are commonly caught off the Washington coast by commercial harvesters using otter-trawls, jig handline and longline gear, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

They are a robust fish with an elongate body and two dorsal fins, capable of growing to over 30 inches in length and living to more than 90 years.

They are often referred to as black cod, even though they are not actually part of the cod family, according to NOAA Fisheries.

Adults are blackish or greenish gray above, usually with slightly paler blotches or a chainlike pattern on the upper back and more pale below. The Washington state record black cod is 30 pounds, caught off the coast of Grays Harbor County in 1994 by Jeff Rudolph.

The fish range from Japan north into the Bering Sea and south through Alaska and British Columbia to Mexico, with highest concentrations in Alaska. Adults can be found on mud bottoms in depths of 300 to 1,500 meters (984 to 4,900 feet).

Sablefish have been identified as a potential species for commercial farming in the Pacific Northwest, according to NOAA Fisheries, where they are the target of a sustainably managed commercial and recreational fishery. The United States currently does not produce farmed sablefish, but researchers are experimenting with raising them in hopes of creating a viable commercial aquaculture industry.

Read the full article at Chinook Observer

ALASKA: Summer troll update, Fish scarce, catch low

July 14, 2026 — On Friday morning, the 10th day of the summer king salmon troll opening, the catch was less than half of the harvest target of 83,700, fishery officials said. The opening, which was initially projected to last seven to ten days, will continue until further notice.

Department of Fish and Game troll fishery management biologist Grant Hagerman said that since July 1 fish abundance, fleet effort and catch rate have been low.
“Fewer fish, fewer boats, and fewer fish per boat,” Hagerman summarized for the Sentinel.
Hagerman says the fishery will stay open until further notice. Last year, the summer troll opening lasted four days. As of Friday morning, Fish & Game estimates that trollers had caught fewer than 35,000 chinook in nine days in this opening, compared to 40,000 chinook harvested in four days in 2025.
There is a higher treaty allocation this year; Southeast commercial trollers can harvest up to 146,000 treaty chinook. Last year the limit was a record low of 92,730.

Pacific bluefin tuna working group meeting ends without recommendations

July 14, 2026 — A working group of nations that commercially harvest Pacific bluefin tuna concluded its July meeting without agreeing on new management measures to be implemented in 2027.

“For much of the last decade, Pacific bluefin management showed that when governments work together, they can bring a severely overfished species back from the brink of collapse. But at a joint management meeting in Nagasaki, Japan, governments disregarded a tentative agreement they made in March to adopt a much-needed management procedure for the species at this convening,” Dave Gershman, who heads up The Pew Charitable Trusts’ conservation work with Pacific RMFOs, said in a release

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA identifies six foreign governments engaging in IUU fishing, including Russia and China

July 7, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries has identified six nations engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing based on the activities of those foreign governments from 2022 through 2024.

Every two years, the agency sends a report to Congress identifying which countries are engaged in IUU fishing, which countries have adequate shark protections, and which countries have forced labor present in their seafood supply chains. NOAA Fisheries also issues certifications based on what actions countries identified in past reports have done to address the problems raised by the agency.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA eyes potential changes to Alaska sea lion protections as Trump urges boosted seafood harvests

July 6, 2026 — Federal regulators plan to reevaluate fishing closure boundaries established to protect endangered Steller sea lions in Alaska, part of a national Trump administration push to cut regulation of U.S. commercial seafood harvests.

The Steller sea lion protections are among a series of rules that the administration is seeking to relax or change to carry out a mandate from President Donald Trump to increase catches, reduce regulation and ensure that the nation is “the world’s dominant seafood leader.”

The recommended changes were released on Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries service and are in response to Trump’s 2025 executive order titled “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.” They could affect oceans from New England and the Caribbean to the tropical Pacific and the Bering Sea.

Several months of public consultations resulted in a list of recommendations that “we believe will reduce burdens on domestic fishing, increase production, stabilize markets, improve access, and enhance economic profitability,” NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator Eugenio Piñeiro Soler said in a statement.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

The hidden cost of fisheries subsidies

March 17, 2026 — In public finance, some costs are politely kept off the books. The ocean has long been one of them. Governments often speak of “blue growth” and “sustainable use,” yet many policies still treat marine ecosystems as a kind of free input: available, resilient, and cheap to replace. The result is ecological decline. It is also a fiscal problem. States end up assuming risks they would not tolerate on land.

Fishing provides a clear example. For decades, a large share of industrial effort has been propped up by public money. One influential analysis of high-seas fishing found that governments subsidized high-seas fleets by about $4.2 billion in 2014—more than the estimated net economic benefit of that fishing—and that without subsidies, as much as 54% of the high-seas fishing grounds currently exploited would have been unprofitable at the prices and costs prevailing at the time.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Op-ed: A momentous US Supreme Court decision

January 7, 2026 — When I was an economics major in the late 1960s, I was taught that tariffs, as well as non-tariff barriers, should be avoided as a burden on trade and a tax on the populace. However, because the world has not accepted that teaching and tariffs have become a major defensive tool for advancing the Trump administration’s policy objectives, the conventional wisdom should be reconsidered.

Today, there are over 180 nation-states trying to be competitive on the world markets for goods and services, 35 percent of which are represented by the United States. Consequently, access to our markets is extremely important. U.S. tariffs provide critical, indispensable leverage against unfair foreign trade practices, including tariffs and nontariff barriers to our exports, and unfair penetration of our markets to the detriment of domestic production and jobs. Lessons can be drawn from trade experiences with two of America’s closest allies: Japan and Canada.

Japan, over the last 40 months, has devalued its currency against the U.S. dollar by 50%, from 105 to 155 yen to the dollar. This means that Japan has effectively established the equivalent of a 50% tariff on all international imports.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Eel populations are falling, and new protections were defeated. Japan and the US opposed them

December 1, 2025 — Eels are the stuff of nightmares — slimy, snakelike creatures that lay millions of eggs before dying so their offspring can return home to rivers and streams. They’ve existed since the time of the dinosaurs, and some species are more poorly understood than those ancient animals.

Yet they’re also valuable seafood fish that are declining all over the world, leading to a new push for restrictions on trade to help stave off extinction.

Freshwater eels are critically important for the worldwide sushi industry, and some species have declined by more than 90% since the 1980s. The eels have succumbed to a combination of river dams, hydroelectric turbines, pollution, habitat loss, climate change, illegal poaching and overfishing, according to scientists. Some environmental organizations have called for consumers to boycott eel at sushi restaurants.

The loss of eels motivated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, to consider new restrictions to protect the wriggling fish. The members of CITES, an international treaty, met in Uzbekistan this week to determine if the new rules on trade are needed. Member nations voted against the new protections on Thursday.

Conservation groups said the protections were long overdue, but not everyone was on board. Some fishing groups, seafood industry members and regulatory agencies in the U.S., China and Japan — all countries where eel is economically important — have spoken out against restricting the trade.

Read the full article at the Associated Press