Saving Seafood

ALASKA: NOAA firings and cuts will reduce services used to manage Alaska fisheries, officials say

June 11, 2025 — Trump administration job cuts in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will result in less scientific information that is needed to set and oversee Alaska seafood harvests, agency officials have warned fishery managers.

Since January, the Alaska regional office of NOAA Fisheries, also called the National Marine Fisheries Service, has lost 28 employees, about a quarter of its workforce, said Jon Kurland, the agency’s Alaska director.

“This, of course, reduces our capacity in a pretty dramatic fashion, including core fishery management functions such as regulatory analysis and development, fishery permitting and quota management, information technology, and operations to support sustainable fisheries,” Kurland told the North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Thursday.

NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which has labs in Juneau’s Auke Bay and Kodiak, among other sites, has lost 51 employees since January, affecting 6% to 30% of its operations, said director Robert Foy, the center’s director. That was on top of some job losses and other “resource limitations” prior to January, Foy said.

“It certainly puts us in a situation where it is clear that we must cancel some of our work,” he told the council.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting in Newport, Oregon, sets harvest levels and rules for commercial seafood harvests carried out in federal waters off Alaska. The council relies on scientific information from NOAA Fisheries and other government agencies.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: NMFS reports 24 percent cut in Alaska staffing

June 9, 2025 —  The National Marine Fisheries Service reported 24 percent of its staff in the Alaska region have left the agency so far in 2025, after layoffs imposed by the Trump administration, voluntary resignations and workers moving on amid uncertainty nd belief there will be future cutbacks.

In a May 30 management report to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the fisheries service said its Alaska region staff “had 115 Federal employees on January 1, 2025 which is now reduced to 87 accounting for a loss of 28 staff (24% of existing staff) due to a combination of probationary terminations, the deferred resignation program, voluntary early retirement, and voluntary separations in anticipation of a reduction in force.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

GAO: Faster, clearer fishery disaster relief from NOAA

May 30, 2025 — A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the agency responsible for managing fishery disaster assistance, takes too long to get relief into the hands of fishermen, and that’s costing coastal communities across the country.

Since 2014, NMFS has received 111 requests for fishery resource disaster assistance. For 56 of the most recently approved requests, the agency took between 1.3 and 4.8 years to disburse $642 million. The agency is altering the program in an effort to reduce the process to 1 year, the report stated.

 The long delays have left states, Tribes, and fishing communities struggling in the wake of disasters like hurricanes, oil spills, and flooding. In one example, the 2019 Gulf of Mexico freshwater flooding event caused over $101 million in losses to Louisianans’ fisheries alone.

The GAO report highlights the systemic issues, including “inadequate communication about request status,” limited access to internal tracking systems, and a lack of clear guidance on how to prepare disaster requests on spend plans. “Providing more detailed information on its website would better inform requesters about the information they need to submit,” the report states.

NMFS has begun implementing statutory timelines added in the 2022 Fishery Resource Disasters Improvement Act (FRDIA), which could help shorten the disaster relief timeline to just over a year. Early signs show some improvement; the median time to make a determination dropped from 282 days for 2022 requests to 140 days for those submitted in the first half of 2024.

The GAO found that “no disaster requests had gone through the entire process to disburse funds to the requested since FRDIA’s additional timelines, as of August 2024.” In the meantime, communities are left hanging.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Seafood Producers Cooperative response to WFC lawsuit

May 22, 2025 — On behalf of the nearly 400 members of Seafood Producers Cooperative, who are very dependent on the wild chinook fishery for a large part of their livelihoods, and as such, are very supportive of conservation efforts regarding Chinook, I would like to respond to the recent news of another attempt by the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC), in their typical fashion of accusations and demands via litigation, to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for not listing Alaska Wild King Salmon stocks under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which the WFC, in their opinion, feels is necessary.

Alaska possesses the largest coastline of all other states combined, over 33 thousand miles, with 19,000 rivers and streams that salmon spawn in. To undertake a scientific study that identifies the Chinook returns to these spawning areas is a huge task, and to complete this with any degree of accuracy could take years. With NOAA currently facing major budget reductions, it is likely that NMFS will be even more challenged in their ability to conduct the studies to determine whether Chinook ESA listing is warranted or not, in a time frame that satisfies the WFC.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

A ‘worthwhile effort’ to address trawl bottom contact

May 19, 2025 — Jon Kurland, Alaska regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, agreed to take questions on the issue of trawl gear touching bottom and the pollock industry’s Gear Innovation Initiative. Here are his responses.

NF: It seems the issue of pollock trawl gear contacting the seafloor has taken on a higher profile lately. Is this true, and if so, why?
Jon Kurland: It’s been gaining attention for a while. A number of stakeholders have raised concerns about unobserved mortality of crabs from pelagic trawls contacting the seafloor as well as impacts to bottom habitats. It was a big topic during the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s review of potential new management measures for the Red King Crab Savings Area in the Bering Sea – an area that is closed to bottom trawling but open to pelagic trawling.

NF: What role have you and Alaska’s fish and game commissioner, Doug Vincent-Lang, played in elevating this issue?
JK: Commissioner Vincent-Lang and I have met with members of the pollock industry about this a number of times. We told them this is an important issue and that we’d like to see the industry take a leadership role in exploring and devising viable solutions to reduce bottom contact in areas where that’s a concern due to potential consequences for unobserved mortality of crabs or impacts to bottom habitats.

NF: Do we know enough now about the actual impact of trawl gear on the bottom and benthic habitat?
JK: It’s important to distinguish between bottom trawls and pelagic trawls. We know that bottom trawls are designed to fish on the bottom, and managers have closed some areas to bottom trawling specifically to avoid those impacts. Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about how much pelagic trawls contact the bottom. We know that fishermen sometimes fish these nets very close to the bottom and make contact with the seafloor, but we don’t have much quantitative data about that.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman

Western Pacific Council Flags Economic Burdens of Electronic Monitoring, Backs Relief Efforts

April 1, 2025 — While more fleets across the country move to electronic monitoring, the costs continue to be a concern. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council is the latest Council to document the burden on fishermen and seek help.  

Last week’s Council meeting discussions focused on electronic monitoring in longline fisheries in Hawaii and American Samoa regarding cost allocation, funding strategies and economic viability. 

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) confirmed it will cover $4 million in upfront EM program costs, separate from the estimated $2.4 million in annual expenses and in contrast to the $7 million spent annually on the human observer program. While NMFS said it will fund server replacements and data storage, the fishing industry could be responsible for replacing EM systems at $10,000 per vessel every three years. 

Council members and staff were not satisfied. 

American Samoa Vice Chair Archie Soliai questioned whether NMFS would commit to cost-sharing beyond three years, while Council Executive Director Kitty Simonds urged NMFS to seek funding from NOAA Headquarters, arguing that federally mandated monitoring costs should not fall on the industry.  

“If the federal government requires monitoring under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, it needs to pay for it, regardless of whether the Council initiates its implementation,” Simonds said in a statement. “We have been suggesting EM since 2002.” 

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

US judge dismisses lawsuit challenging Bering Sea pollock fishery

March 18, 2025 — A U.S. district court judge has rejected a lawsuit seeking a new environmental impact study of the Bering Sea commercial pollock fishery, allowing NOAA Fisheries to continue relying on studies from 2004 and 2007 to regulate the fishery.

“We are deeply disappointed by this decision, which allows the National Marine Fisheries Service to continue relying on outdated studies while our salmon populations collapse,” TCC Chief and Chairman Brian Ridley said in a statement.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Federal shakeup sparks uncertainty for Pacific fisheries

March 13 2025 — Federal actions are causing uncertainty in the scheduled openings of Alaska’s Pacific fisheries, raising concerns among fishermen and owner/operators about potential disruptions to the fishing season.

Recent personnel changes within the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) have cast doubt on the scientific assessments crucial for managing fish stocks in the region. According to the Alaska Beacon, three NMFS employees in Alaska were recently dismissed, creating unease about the continuity of scientific research that informs fisheries management. These individuals collected and analyzed stock assessment data, a key factor in determining sustainable catch limits. Their sudden removal has led to concerns that vital scientific work may be delayed or compromised just as fisheries prepare to open.

The potential gaps in research have alarmed commercial fishermen, who rely on accurate stock assessments to guide their operations. Without up-to-date data, fishery managers face challenges setting quotas, which could result in either overly restrictive or overly lenient catch limits, both of which carry economic and ecological risks.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Federal judge sides with environmentalists to protect Gulf corals

March 8, 2025 — A federal judge in Hawaii ruled Thursday that the National Marine Fisheries Service had wrongly denied climate change protections to 20 threatened coral species in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, even though the service had previously identified climate change as the main threat to these corals’ survival.

U.S. District Judge Micah Smith granted partial summary judgement to the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned for the corals’ protection in 2020 and sued the service in 2023 for regulations to address climate change, a ban on international trade, and protections against local threats like development and poor water quality.

“I’m delighted by this court ruling because it underlines climate change’s overwhelming threat to imperiled corals,” said Emily Jeffers, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve lost half of the world’s coral reefs in the past 40 years, and if we don’t act quickly the rest could disappear forever by the end of this century.”

Smith determined that the service failed to explain properly why it wouldn’t protect corals from climate change.

The agency had claimed such regulations would have “limited effectiveness,” but Smith found this explanation inadequate, especially since climate change poses the greatest threat to these species. The court labeled this decision “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the agency to reconsider.

“In reaching this conclusion, it is worth noting what NMFS did not say. NMFS did not conclude that it lacked the legal authority to adopt Section 4(d) regulations to address climate change. Nor did it say that it was unaware of what Section 4(d) regulations it might adopt to accomplish those ends, or that the center’s petition suffered from a lack of clarity,” Smith wrote.

The judge similarly overturned the service’s decision not to issue regulations protecting Caribbean coral species from local threats, finding that the agency also provided no proper justification for this choice.

Read the full article Court House News Service

Experts and Lawmakers Sound Alarms Over Impacts of NOAA Cuts on Fisheries

March 4, 2025 — After several hundred employees were fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week as part of DOGE’s workforce cuts, reporting has focused on how those cuts might threaten critical weather modeling and systems that help predict and warn the public about severe weather events such as hurricanes and tsunamis.

In response to a question asking for more details on the staff cuts, a NOAA spokesperson told Civil Eats that “per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.” But reports suggest staff cuts have happened across all six offices within NOAA, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

Read the full article at Civil Eats