Saving Seafood

Fishermen’s Case That Overturned Chevron Sees Agency Rule Upheld

July 17, 2025 — Atlantic herring fishermen failed to overturn a National Marine Fisheries Service rule requiring vessels to pay onboard compliance monitors’ costs in a case that joined Loper Bright v. Raimondo in rolling back agency deference at the US Supreme Court.

The US District Court for the District of Rhode Island upheld the agency’s interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act’s vessel observer requirements on Tuesday, offering an early indication of how much courts may exercise independent judgment in determining if the government conducted “reasoned decisionmaking.”

“Congress explicitly delegated discretionary authority,” to the NMFS to issue rules that the agency deems “necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery,” and Judge William E. Smith ruled industry-funded monitoring fits within those parameters.

The Supreme Court included a discretionary delegation caveat in the Loper Bright decision last June, which overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine requiring courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The cases were remanded to their respective appeals courts, and the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit sent this case back to district court.

Read the full article at Bloomberg Law

Court affirms split federal-state Cook Inlet salmon management system

July 14, 2025 — A federal judge has upheld the National Marine Fisheries Service’s new system to manage commercial harvests in federal waters of Cook Inlet, concluding that the agency has no obligation to extend that management to state waters.

The July 1 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason lets stand a split federal-state management regime for commercial salmon harvests in Cook Inlet, the marine waters by Alaska’s most heavily populated region.

The ruling is a win for the NMFS, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a loss for fishers who sought federal management of all Cook Inlet commercial salmon harvests because they were dissatisfied with state management.

NMFS had previously deferred all Cook Inlet commercial salmon harvest management to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full article at the Alaska Public Media

Federal judge upholds state control in Cook Inlet salmon fishery management dispute

July 7, 2025 — US District Judge Sharon Gleason has ruled in favor of the National Marine Fisheries Service, upholding Amendment 16 to the federal salmon fishery management plan and confirming the agency’s authority to regulate only federal waters in the Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone.

The decision is a legal victory for the State of Alaska, preserving state jurisdiction over nearshore salmon fisheries and reinforcing the state’s role in sustainable resource management.

The ruling stems from a legal challenge to Amendment 16, which clarified NMFS’s decision to manage salmon fishing in federal waters — waters beyond three miles from shore. But the amendment did not grant authority over Alaska’s state waters.

The plaintiffs in the case — United Cook Inlet Drift Association and Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund — argued that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act required a unified approach across both federal and state jurisdictions to effectively manage salmon stocks. They also claimed NMFS’s actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

Read the full article at Must Read Alaska

US district court judge dismisses lawsuit brought against NMFS by Alaska set-net fishers

July 7, 2025 –A judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the United Cook Inlet Drift Association and the Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over what the organizations claimed was violations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).

The two organizations, which represent fishers in the Cook Inlet in the U.S. state of Alaska, have spent over a decade launching lawsuits against NMFS, with the latest complaint saying the action was intended to “get Federal Defendants to stop shirking their duty” on the Cook Inlet salmon fishery. Plaintiffs claimed the NMFS ignored statutory duties intended for the federal government and, instead, deferred to the state of Alaska.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Feds must decide on protections for Chinook salmon

June 30, 2025 — In a move environmentalists are hailing as an important victory for Chinook salmon conservation, the federal government has agreed to decide this year whether the fish warrants federal protections.

By Nov. 3, the National Marine Fisheries Service must decide whether so-called Oregon Coast and Southern Oregon and Northern California Coastal varieties of Chinook salmon warrant protections under the Endangered Species Act.

By Jan. 2 of next year, feds must do the same for Washington Coast spring-run Chinook salmon, according to a settlement agreement from Thursday.

The Center for Biological Diversity — joined by the Native Fish Society, Umpqua Watersheds, and Pacific Rivers — in February sued the service and two top officials after the service failed to issue 12-month findings on the groups’ petitions to list the fish.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

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