Saving Seafood

Canadian and US regulations are at odds in the Salish Sea, and whales are caught in the middle

December 30, 2025 — The Salish Sea is one ecosystem but Canada and the US are playing by different rules when it comes to protecting threatened whales, experts warn.

Endangered southern resident killer whales and at-risk humpbacks are blind to borders when transiting the transboundary waters in southern BC and northwestern Washington State that encompass the Strait of Georgia, Juan de Fuca Strait and Puget Sound, said Chloe Robinson, director of whales for Ocean Wise.

But an inconsistent patchwork of protection measures on either side of the border means the two whale species are increasingly vulnerable to ship strike, vessel disturbance, pollution, underwater noise and diminishing food sources, she said.

“The threats don’t change just because whales have crossed an invisible line,” Robinson said.

Problematic discrepancies exist between regulations around whale distance rules for boats, fisheries management, habitat protections and pollution standards, said Robinson, who led a comparative study of key conservation measures on each side of the border.

Both countries, along with provincial and state governments, need to align regulations, close protection gaps and reduce confusion for mariners, whale watching operations and vessels transiting the region to reduce cumulative stresses of whales, Robinson said.

There’s a dizzying mix of vessel approach distances and speed regulations for whale watching operators and recreational boaters on either side of the border depending on the type of whale and, in some cases, what they are doing, she added.

Read the full article at the National Observer

ALASKA: In waters off Alaska, fishermen struggle to keep orcas from their catch

November 17, 2025 — The orca pod that forages in the waters just north of this Aleutian island are quick to swarm any halibut boat with a skipper foolish enough to drop lines in their domain.

As the lines are pulled up, and fresh-caught fish near the surface, the whales, in a well-honed feeding ritual, pick them off the hooks.

Skipper Robert Hanson’s lines have been hit by lots of the killer whales that dwell in the Bering Sea. He has found the Unalaska pod to be the most savvy, skilled and aggressive — leaving just traces of halibut, the largest of which could have netted Hanson hundreds of dollars apiece.

“Most of the time, you get nothing. Sometimes a lip, or a half a fish, if they get full,” Hanson said. “They are particularly good at what they do.”

For the past 20 years, Hanson has sought to avoid feeding these whales and prospected for halibut elsewhere. But during a May fishing trip, Hanson dared to set his lines near these whales as part of an eight-day sea trial to test a new defense, an aluminum “shuttle” resembling a small submarine.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

OREGON: Oregon seeks public input on endangered orca management strategy

July 25, 2025 — The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking feedback on its draft Endangered Species Management Plan for Southern Resident Orcas.

The agency presented its findings and how it plans to support the endangered species during a virtual meeting on July 9, and is currently accepting comments through Aug. 15.

ODFW’s draft plan includes continuing to work to restore healthy salmon populations, protect orcas from development in Oregon waters, and focus on education efforts. In addition, the proposal includes new plans to increase salmon hatchery production, explore the possibility of regulations for boaters, and additional data collection efforts.

Read the full article at KOIN

Bolder efforts needed to save Northwest’s endangered orcas, report finds

July 14, 2025 — Efforts to save the Northwest’s endangered orcas are not working on either side of the U.S.-Canada border, according to an international panel of scientists.

In a new report, the panel of 31 researchers call for bolder measures to bring the endangered whales back from the brink of extinction.

The whale experts say these orcas urgently need comprehensive action for quiet, clean, salmon-rich waters.

“It’s a declining population, and it’s a population that we predict will be declining for a generation or two, and then that decline will accelerate rapidly towards extinction if we don’t turn this around quickly,” said Rob Williams, chief scientist with the nonprofit Oceans Initiative in Seattle and one of the report’s coauthors.

The salmon-eating orcas, known as southern resident killer whales, were declared an endangered species in Canada in 2001 and in the United States in 2005.

Read the full article at KUOW

Appeals court upholds Alaska salmon fishery operations

August 20, 2024 — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that an Alaska salmon fishery can continue operation despite environmentalists’ concerns about its affect on killer whale populations.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that had threatened to halt fishing at Alaska’s Southeast troll salmon fishery. Wild Fish Conservancy, a conservationist group based in Washington state, sued to stop fishery operations in 2020 on the grounds that fishing for Chinook salmon was depleting a primary food source for endangered Southern Resident killer whales.

The Conservancy argued that NOAA Fisheries, which oversees the troll salmon fishery, violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act while drafting a 2019 biological opinion about fishing’s impact on the endangered killer whales. U.S. District Judge Richard Jones sided with the conservationists and ordered the fishery to be at least temporarily shuttered in May 2023, but a stay by the 9th Circuit kept the fishery open.

Read the full article at E&E News

US appeals court allows Alaska fishery to remain open

August 19, 2024 — A federal appeals court on Friday reversed a judge’s decision that would have effectively shuttered an Alaska salmon fishery, a result environmentalists sought in order to protect endangered whales and threatened wild Chinook salmon populations.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held, opens new tab that a judge in Seattle last year abused his discretion by vacating a key authorization issued by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Services for the fishery’s summer and winter Chinook salmon harvests.

U.S. District Judge Richard Jones at the urging of the Wild Fish Conservancy had in May 2023 vacated part of a so-called incidental take statement the fisheries service issued in 2019 that authorized the commercial Chinook salmon troll fishery in southeast Alaska.

He did so after finding it violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to adequately provide a plan to mitigate impacts from commercial fishing on threatened wild Chinook salmon and endangered southern resident orca that depend on them for food off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and Canada.

Read the full article at Reuters

Alaska Trollers Association gets legal victory, awaits updated NMFS king salmon biological opinion

August 19, 2024 — The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed a victory to the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA) by reversing a lower court’s ruling that found commercial chinook salmon fishing in Southeast Alaska endangered southern resident killer whales.

In May 2023, at the bequest of the environmental nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy, a U.S. federal judge ruled the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must remake its management plan for king salmon, finding NFMS did not adequately analyze the fishery’s impact on the southern resident killer whale population in the U.S. state of Washington.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

9th Circuit Appeals Court lifts lower court ruling ordering closure of Southeast Alaska king salmon troll fishery

August 19, 2024 — A controversial 2023 court ruling ordering the closure of commercial trolling for king salmon, or chinook, in Southeast Alaska has been lifted.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on August 16 partially reversed a lower court ruling stemming from a lawsuit brought by a Washington state conservation group hoping to protect an endangered population of killer whales. The panel of three judges decided that shutting down the fishery is the wrong prescription for the whales’ survival.

When judges Mark Bennett, Anthony Johnstone, and Milan Smith Jr. heard oral arguments for the case on July 18, they expressed sympathy for the Southeast communities that would suffer severe economic consequences from losing the fishery. The judges’ August 16 decision echoes that sentiment, saying that the initial ruling “glossed over significant economic consequences, as well as the downstream social and cultural harms to fishing villages and Alaska Natives.”

The court’s action wasn’t entirely unexpected. Last year the panel ordered a stay of the lower court ruling just eleven days before the start of the July 1 summer troll season, and fishing took place as usual. Nevertheless, the lower court ruling had not been vacated, leaving the future of the fishery in doubt.

Read the full article at KFSK

Ninth Circuit unsure of court’s efficacy in Alaska killer whale conservation case

July 19, 2024 — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing how effective its opinion will be in a lawsuit over how Chinook salmon fishing affects Southern Resident killer whales — and judges on Thursday wondered whether the effort would be rendered moot by a pending government agency action.

The Wild Fish Conservancy sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020, accusing the agency of violating the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in its 2019 Southeast Alaska Biological Opinion and incidental take statement by bypassing public notice and opportunity to comment on the actions.

Alaska and the Alaska Trollers Association, a representative of the commercial fishing industry in the state, intervened as codefendants.

Chinook salmon are the primary food source for Southern Resident killer whales, which were placed on the endangered species list in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Richard Jones remanded the biological opinion and vacated the portions of it that authorized commercial harvest of Chinook salmon during winter and summer seasons. The ruling would have prevented Southeast Alaskan trollers from fishing for Chinook salmon, but the Ninth Circuit issued a stay, allowing commercial fisheries to continue harvest while the parties appealed.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Bottom-trawl gear to blame for most of this year’s fishery-related killer whale deaths, NOAA says

December 5, 2023 — A federal investigation into the unusually large number of Bering Sea and Aleutian killer whales found dead this summer determined that most but not all of the deaths were killed by entanglement in fishing gear.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center on Friday released some details about the deaths in the Bering Sea and Aleutians, which had spurred sharp criticism of seafood trawling practices.

Of the nine killer whales that were found ensnared in bottom-trawling gear, six were killed by those entanglements but two others were already dead before they were netted, the investigation found. The other whale was seriously injured by the gear entanglement but escaped alive, the agency said.

In addition to the nine whales found in bottom-trawl gear, there were two other cases of dead killer whales found entangled in other types of fishing gear.

Read the full story at the Alaska Beacon