Saving Seafood

Research vessel goes adrift while monitoring Gulf of Maine algal bloom

October 28, 2026 –Researchers say a research vessel that went adrift while monitoring a harmful algal bloom in the Gulf of Maine has been recovered, with more details expected soon.

The bright-yellow SeaTrac autonomous vessel lost communications with its operators on Oct. 12 while holding position about 30 nautical miles southeast of Frenchman Bay, Maine. Researchers later offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to its recovery.

Researchers with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NERACOOS re-established communication with the SeaTrac on Oct. 23, when it was roughly 90 miles off Gloucester, Massachusetts. The vessel has since been recovered.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: What’s in your logbook? New Bedford wants to preserve fishing history

October 27, 2026 — The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is asking fishermen and fishing families to dig through old file boxes, basements, and kitchen drawers for records that could help preserve the history of one of the nation’s most prominent commercial fishing communities.

The center has launched a new collection and digitization effort focused on fishermen’s documents, including logbooks, settlement sheets, vessel trip reports, charts and other records from the New Bedford fishing industry.

For generations, fishermen have kept handwritten logs documenting their time at sea, recording everything from fishing locations and catches to weather, sea conditions, and tow duration. Settlement sheets offer another piece of the story, detailing trip expenses, wages, and crew shares.

Together, those records can provide a window into both the economic and environmental changes fishermen have experienced over time.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

How Northeastern is helping shellfishers and diners of a New England speciality

October 26, 2026 —

It was a beautiful morning on the Parker River.

The sun peeked through the clouds from the previous weekend’s nor’easter, giving the golden marsh grasses an extra autumnal sheen.

Frenetic yellow-legged shorebirds took flight as the small boat navigated the curves of the meandering river, and even the looming Route One bridge could not mar the pastoral scene, as little traffic passed after the motor was cut and the boat drifted along the shoreline.

Unfortunately, Northeastern University graduate student Grace Abe was not exactly enjoying her surroundings. She had just sunk up to her knees in mud.

“I had it too easy with the first one,” Abe said, while prying a wooden box out of the mud.

The container that emerged was 1-foot-square and several-inches tall, made primarily of wood composite with a mesh screen on its top and landscaping fabric on its bottom.

It did not look too high-tech. In fact, it looked like it might contain a small pizza.

But for the last six months, the Beal Box – named after its inventor, University of Maine marine ecologist Brian Beal – had been sitting in the mud flat and acting as a nursery for an iconic and delicious New England species, the soft-shell clam.

“The soft-shell clam has been a staple fishery in New England for generations,” said David Kimbro, associate professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern.

But the species is under pressure.

Read the full article at Northeastern Global News

Trump Administration Targets Fourth Offshore Wind Project for Remand

October 22, 2026 — In what is clearly emerging as a new tactic to derail the offshore wind energy sector, the Department of Justice filed for the fourth time in just a matter of days, asking a District Court to remand the prior approval of the Construction and Operations Plan of a proposed offshore wind farm. The latest target is New England Wind and is drawing angry criticism from environmentalists and elected officials.

The Department of Justice filed a memorandum in support of the long-running case between an environmental group, Ack For Whales, which has been suing the Department of Commerce and Avangrid, the developer of a project known as New England Wind. In the now common tactic, DOJ asks the District Court for the District of Columbia to remand the approval of the Construction and Operations Plan back to the Department of the Interior so that it can reconsider the approval under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

It writes in the memorandum that the approval, which was announced on July 1, 2024, “did not properly consider or explain how the COP ‘provides for’ the subsection’s identified factors.” It is the fourth time DOJ has used a similar tactic to target the permits for wind farms. It took the same approach to challenge the largely completed Revolution Wind project, which should complete commissioning by the end of this year, and then to challenge a series of projects that had gained approvals under the Biden administration but have not commenced construction.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive 

MAINE: Several whales got entangled along the Maine coast in 2025, federal report finds

October 2, 2026 — A new report finds there were 76 confirmed entangled large whales documented along the coasts of the United States in 2025.

The report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries says five of those entanglements were off the coast of Maine, with another unidentified whale in the Gulf of Maine. There were also two entanglements within the Gulf of Maine off the coast of Massachusetts.

The identified entangled whales off the Maine coast include three humpback whales, a fin whale and a minke whale. Both of the entangled whales off the northern coast of Massachusetts were humpback whales.

There was only one documented entanglement involving a North Atlantic right whale in 2025. That case was off the coast of Georgia.

Read the full article at WMTW

Kevin Stokesbury named inaugural Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Dean of SMAST

October 1, 2026 — UMass Dartmouth announced that Kevin D. E. Stokesbury, Dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) and Commonwealth Professor, has been named the inaugural Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology.

The endowed deanship was established through the generosity of Donna and Robert Manning as part of their historic $50 million gift to the University of Massachusetts system announced in 2021. A $2 million gift supporting the deanship has been matched with an additional $1 million, providing enduring support for the leadership of SMAST and its research, teaching, and contributions to a healthier and more sustainable marine environment.

“Under Dean Stokesbury’s leadership, the School for Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth is the premier institution—in New England and beyond—for marine and applied sciences,” said Rob Manning, who serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at the UMass Foundation. “From attracting a world-class research faculty to building strong, trusted relationships across government, advocacy, and fisheries, Dean Stokesbury has positioned SMAST at the forefront of scientific discovery, and Donna and I are proud to support and advance his work.”

Read the full article at UMass Dartmouth

MASSACHUSETTS: Slow progress on dilapidated State Pier causes waterfront squeeze

September 30, 2026 — Tucked along a corner of the New Bedford State Pier’s East Wharf is a small ferry, the lifeline for a windswept island in Buzzards Bay.

The Cuttyhunk Ferry not only delivers passengers to and from the island of the same name throughout the year, but supplies too.

“We were there for 20-plus years … everybody knew to go right there,” Jono Billings, the ferry’s longtime operator, told The Light, pointing to the State Pier’s now-empty South Wharf.

Then, late last year, state officials found the century-old wooden pier had major structural issues and closed sections of it. The ferry, along with other businesses, had to leave parts of the pier’s East and South wharves.

It’s only the most recent closure along the dilapidated State Pier, built in 1913. A portion of the North Wharf has been closed since 2019. While the multimillion dollar repairs there could start later this year, only a portion of the dock is left available for use.

The mostly-closed state asset sits in an otherwise heavily-invested-in port. City officials have facilitated over $1 billion in funds to build, repair and expand maritime infrastructure since 2014, Mayor Jon Mitchell told The Light.

“The biggest thing going here is what we’re doing on the water,” Mitchell said of the city.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Scientists, fishermen want feds to keep funding deep-ocean observation system

September 29, 2026 — New England scientists and fishermen are urging the Trump administration to continue funding the Ocean Observatories Initiative — a network of buoys and gliders that collect data from remote parts of the ocean. The National Science Foundation began quietly dismantling the deep-ocean observation system last summer, until the effort was blocked by the U.S. Senate.

The hundreds of scientific instruments remain in the water for the moment, and the federal agency is now asking for public input on the future of the system, with a deadline for comments set for September 30.

Scientists are regarding the agency’s recent request for input with cautious optimism, said Hilary Palevsky, a  marine biogeochemist at Boston College. She said the abrupt removal of instruments from the water last summer “shook the community.”

“That was really different from how NSF has operated in the past,” she said.

While the system could certainly use some tweaks, upgrades and better integration with other ocean observation technology, she said, “that should be a decision that’s made with robust community engagement and peer review, not a top-down decision.”

Read the full article at wbur

Diesel at $6.52 squeezes fishing fleets as lobster demand sags

September 28, 2026 — The national average U.S. diesel price hit $6.529 per gallon for the week of September 21, its 11th consecutive weekly increase, according to EIA data reported by Logistics Management — and nowhere is that pain more concentrated than on the nation’s fishing docks.

Heating Oil futures (CME:HO1!), the most direct commodity expression of the diesel crunch, were trading at $4.64 per gallon ahead of Monday’s NYSE open, up 3.88% from Friday’s close and more than double their 52-week low of $2.31, per Investing.com data. Equity investors looking for a direct market handle on fishing-sector margin pressure can watch two thresholds: Clearwater Seafoods trades as a proxy for seafood-processor economics, and analysts note that a move by HO1! through $5.00 per gallon would represent the point at which fuel costs exceed most mid-sized fleet operators’ break-even assumptions, likely forcing further capacity reductions and order-book deterioration for processors like Clearwater. That trajectory tracks precisely with what commercial fishermen are paying at the pier.

Cape Cod fisherman Sam Fuller told the Cape Cod Chronicle that diesel at the Chatham fish pier reached $6.44 per gallon, nearly double the $3.48 he paid a year ago. His vessel burns roughly 200 gallons per week. “Unfortunately fishermen, we’re the end of the line. We can’t raise our rates,” Fuller said. “Everything we’re using now is going up.” The quote captures the structural trap: unlike trucking companies or airlines, fishermen have no mechanism to pass fuel costs downstream. Dock prices for their catch are set by buyers, not sellers.

Read the full article at Investing.com