Saving Seafood

The Future of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management: A Conversation with Senior Scientist Dr. Jason Link

January 21, 2026 — Jason Link has been a scientist with NOAA Fisheries for more than 25 years. In 2025, he was honored with the American Fisheries Society’s Award of Excellence, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the aquatic sciences. You can read the first installment here.

In your own words, what is ecosystem-based fisheries management? How does it differ from more traditional single species management?

Ecosystem-based fisheries management, in one word, is about trade-offs. When folks I encounter in my everyday life ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a scientist who studies fish. They say “What do you do with that?” And I tell them about ecosystem-based fisheries management, and how it’s sort of like managing the restaurant supply chain. We model all the people that eat at Burger King, and that has impacts on what people that eat at McDonald’s do, and it has impacts on what people that eat at Taco Bell do. It has impacts all throughout the restaurant chain.

It’s the same in natural resource management: The trade-offs of any one choice we make have trickle-through effects on everything else. And we’ve always kind of known that and had a sense of that, but we’ve never really formally evaluated what those trade-offs would be. And that’s a lot of what I’ve been trying to do.

Why should people–especially those who aren’t fisheries scientists–care about ecosystem-based fisheries management?

I have a lot of family in the Midwest, and they’re familiar with what I do. I’ll say to them, “Hey, you guys are impacting us. Did you know that?” And they don’t know. But the Mississippi River drains into the Gulf. That hypoxic zone in the Gulf comes from farmland. The Midwest is influencing what we’re able to catch. And what we’re able to catch has huge ramifications on regional and local economies.

It also has huge ramifications on what the national seafood market is—what you’re able to get at a supermarket in Iowa or Illinois or Indiana is impacted. And the challenges that you have in the Midwest or the Great Plains, for example, can influence even the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest and some of the salmon there. There’s probably fewer direct impacts, but it’s all still interconnected. The other thing I emphasize is the market economy and how connected fisheries commodities are with the commodities of other foodstuffs we eat. I don’t think people realize that. I didn’t realize it before I started looking into it.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

US senators demand NOAA Fisheries improve enforcement against illegal red snapper harvesting

January 16, 2026 — A group of 10 U.S. senators have penned a joint letter to NOAA Fisheries demanding the agency do more to prevent illegal red snapper from reaching U.S. markets.

“The continued ability to sell illegally harvested red snapper into the U.S. market is a powerful financing source for the [Mexican] cartel and undermines both U.S. fisheries management and national security,” the senators stated in their letter. “We would appreciate NOAA Fisheries’ action in more aggressively applying its existing authorities to ensure that illegally harvested red snapper is not sold in the United States.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

New Tools Help Alaska Communities Prepare for Future Changes in Pacific Cod Distributions

January 16, 2026 — Scientists conducted a new socio-economic risk assessment, combined with statistical modeling, on the risk of coastal Alaskan fishing communities to changes in Pacific cod distributions. Their insights may help these communities prepare and adapt to these changes.

Fishing is central to life in Alaska. North Pacific fisheries, including Pacific cod, support local, state, and national economies. They strengthen cultural ties and food security in coastal communities. The economic and social benefits derived from Alaskan fisheries are deeply connected to the resilience of fishing communities facing changing environmental conditions.

Alaska’s commercial fisheries account for roughly 60 percent of the U.S. seafood harvest, and supply seafood to the United States and the globe. They also provide employment for one in seven Alaskan residents.

Communities Reliant on Pacific Cod Most at Risk

Pacific cod is one of the largest and most important commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska and Eastern Bering Sea. It’s also the lifeblood and economic mainstay for many small coastal fisheries and rural communities across the state. A declining Pacific cod fishery could have significant impacts on these communities.

Alaska Fisheries Science Center scientists found that coastal communities along the southeastern Bering Sea are most vulnerable. They are at greater relative risk if Pacific cod populations shift northward in response to environmental changes. At highest relative risk were those communities within the Aleutians East Borough and Bethel Census Area. The research was conducted as part of the Alaska Climate Integrated Modeling project.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Adventures of a Field Scientist in the Gulf of Maine: So What Do You Do Out There?

January 16, 2026 — Another survey season has just wrapped up for the Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline team. While going to sea and working on these surveys can be fun and exciting, it also drastically disrupts our social and biological schedules. During survey season—April and May in the spring and October and November in the fall—I tend not to make any land-based plans, or see many people from my non-working life. Our schedules are highly dependent on weather conditions and can change at a moment’s notice. At the end of every survey season, when I announce my return from sea in various text messages and emails, I invariably get asked: “So … what do you do out there?”

Sampling the Gulf of Maine’s Rocky Bottom

The Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline Survey focuses on rocky bottom areas in the Gulf of Maine that are challenging for the Bottom Trawl Survey to sample. Using longline gear, we are able to get better data on groundfish species that live around rocky crevices that trawl nets might get hung up on. Each season, we partner with two commercial fishing vessels to sample 45 locations in the Gulf of Maine. We gather data that goes into stock assessments that help us understand what our fish stocks look like today and what they might look like in the future. Data collection at each station includes:

  • Counting, weighing, and measuring every single fish that we catch
  • Assessing age and maturity stage of certain species
  • Gathering biological samples for researchers back on land
  • Tagging and releasing some larger species like sharks and skates

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Congress Moves to Preserve NOAA Funding for Fisheries and Climate Research

January 14, 2026 — On Monday, Senators moved a funding package forward that would preserve 2026 funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), despite the Trump administration’s proposed deep cuts to the agency last year.

The appropriations bill, which funds multiple agencies, already passed in the House; the Senate is expected to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk this week.

Last year, Trump requested a $1.5 billion cut to the agency’s roughly $6 billion budget. A memo from his Office of Management and Budget also proposed eliminating NOAA’s office dedicated to research on climate and weather patterns, zeroing out funding for weather and ocean labs, and moving regulation of fisheries to the Fish & Wildlife Service.

Experts warned the budget cuts could have dire consequences for farmers, who rely on weather data, and the country’s fisheries, which rely on NOAA to enforce catch limits, invest in habitat conservation, and preserve coastlines.

Read the full article at Civil Eats

NORTH CAROLINA: NOAA-backed grants help expand knowledge on farmed seafood

January 14, 2026 — A series of community-driven education projects supported by NOAA Fisheries is helping bridge the gap between seafood producers and the public, highlighting how domestic aquaculture supports working waterfronts, food security, and healthy coastal ecosystems.

Nine projects funded through the eeBLUE Aquaculture Literacy Mini-Grants Program wrapped up in July 2025. The program is a collaboration between NOAA and the North American Association for Environmental Education, designed to strengthen public understanding of sustainable seafood and aquaculture through hands-on learning and local partnerships.

Across the country, the projects paired informal learning institutions with aquaculture businesses and NOAA experts to reach diverse audiences- from students and teachers to chefs and coastal residents. Through farm tours, classroom programming, podcasts, and culinary events, participants learned how seafood is grown, why ocean health matters, and how domestic aquaculture contributes to the U.S. seafood supply.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

How Do You Excel as a Fisheries Scientist? Reflections on a Career with Senior Scientist Dr. Jason Link

January 14, 2026 — Jason Link has been a scientist with NOAA Fisheries for more than 25 years. In 2025, he was honored with the American Fisheries Society’s Award of Excellence, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the aquatic sciences.

How did you get started in fisheries science? What brought you to NOAA?

I was actually going to school in Michigan and playing baseball when I blew out my elbow and realized I was a better biologist than a baseball player. I jumped into limnology, the study of freshwater lakes and rivers. Going into grad school, I was wondering if I should study insects or plankton, and I remember stressing over that something fierce. But I’d always loved to be submerged in aquatic environments, so I chose plankton.

From there, I ended up working in Lake Superior, which is one of the Laurentian Great Lakes as well as an inland sea. I was studying the zooplankton community, and what I was seeing out in the lake was very different from what people had published a couple decades before. I wrote a letter to a guy named Jim Selgeby and said, “Hey, this is different from what I’m seeing. What do you think’s going on? Am I missing something?” And he immediately replied and said, “Come on over here to my lab. We’ve had a huge change in the fish population of lake herring, and we think it’s totally changed the whole ecosystem and food web in the lake.”

Long story short, I did. I got into working with fish. This was a time when there was a big disciplinary debate over top-down, bottom-up control and trophic cascades in entire systems. And we actually showed that all that was happening at the scale of this large inland sea, Lake Superior, because there had been a recovery of these planktivorous fish. That was pretty fascinating.

When it came time to graduate, I began to look at what was in my toolbox and what my interests were. I loved pelagic ecosystems. I loved big water. I had worked with these small silver fish—lake herring—that ate a lot of plankton and were eaten by just about every main predator. They served as this intermediary link between the upper and lower trophic levels. And there’s fish like that in almost every ecosystem, so that was a portable skill that I had, as well as some statistical and modeling skills.

I ended up in the Gulf, working at a NOAA Fisheries lab in Pascagoula. I was overseeing a contract to get their surveys out. I did that for a few years and learned the business of science, how to deal with insurance problems, logistics, leadership, and so forth. And then there was a position that opened up in Woods Hole to run their food web dynamics program, and I figured, why not? I threw my hat in the ring, and I ended up there, and that was almost 30 years ago now.

ason Link has been a scientist with NOAA Fisheries for more than 25 years. In 2025, he was honored with the American Fisheries Society’s Award of Excellence, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the aquatic sciences.

How did you get started in fisheries science? What brought you to NOAA?

I was actually going to school in Michigan and playing baseball when I blew out my elbow and realized I was a better biologist than a baseball player. I jumped into limnology, the study of freshwater lakes and rivers. Going into grad school, I was wondering if I should study insects or plankton, and I remember stressing over that something fierce. But I’d always loved to be submerged in aquatic environments, so I chose plankton.

From there, I ended up working in Lake Superior, which is one of the Laurentian Great Lakes as well as an inland sea. I was studying the zooplankton community, and what I was seeing out in the lake was very different from what people had published a couple decades before. I wrote a letter to a guy named Jim Selgeby and said, “Hey, this is different from what I’m seeing. What do you think’s going on? Am I missing something?” And he immediately replied and said, “Come on over here to my lab. We’ve had a huge change in the fish population of lake herring, and we think it’s totally changed the whole ecosystem and food web in the lake.”

Long story short, I did. I got into working with fish. This was a time when there was a big disciplinary debate over top-down, bottom-up control and trophic cascades in entire systems. And we actually showed that all that was happening at the scale of this large inland sea, Lake Superior, because there had been a recovery of these planktivorous fish. That was pretty fascinating.

When it came time to graduate, I began to look at what was in my toolbox and what my interests were. I loved pelagic ecosystems. I loved big water. I had worked with these small silver fish—lake herring—that ate a lot of plankton and were eaten by just about every main predator. They served as this intermediary link between the upper and lower trophic levels. And there’s fish like that in almost every ecosystem, so that was a portable skill that I had, as well as some statistical and modeling skills.

I ended up in the Gulf, working at a NOAA Fisheries lab in Pascagoula. I was overseeing a contract to get their surveys out. I did that for a few years and learned the business of science, how to deal with insurance problems, logistics, leadership, and so forth. And then there was a position that opened up in Woods Hole to run their food web dynamics program, and I figured, why not? I threw my hat in the ring, and I ended up there, and that was almost 30 years ago now.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

US House passes legislation funding NOAA Fisheries for fiscal year 2026

January 9, 2026 — The U.S. House has voted to pass appropriations legislation funding the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior for the remainder of fiscal year 2026.

“Today, the House took another step forward in advancing three more FY26 appropriations bills to President Trump’s desk,” U.S. Representative Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said after the vote. “Through bipartisan, committee-led consensus, we are delivering full-year measures that spend less than current funding, implement critical priorities for our districts, and continue to advance the America First agenda. This was not by accident – it is the result of ending bloated omnibuses, empowering members, and doing the hard work Article I of the Constitution demands.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Bipartisan budget bill includes more than USD 105 million in NOAA earmarks

January 8, 2026 — More than USD 105 million (EUR 89.9 million) of NOAA’s fiscal year 2026 budget is earmarked for roughly 100 projects hand-selected by U.S. lawmakers, with much of the spending dedicated to supporting fisheries and aquaculture.

Leaders of the U.S. House and Senate appropriations committees released a bipartisan spending bill for the U.S. Department of Commerce – which houses NOAA Fisheries – and several other departments on 5 January. Lawmakers are hoping to get the regular appropriations process back in order after missing their deadline last September, plunging the federal government into a partial shutdown for several weeks. The government was reopened under a short-term spending bill in November, and Congressional leaders have stated their intent to pass regular appropriations bills to cover the remainder of the fiscal year before it expires 30 January.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource