Saving Seafood

US senators lay out NOAA Fisheries priorities in budget bill

July 22, 2025 — The U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations has laid out its fisheries and seafood priorities for fiscal year 2026, reporting out several provisions to guide NOAA Fisheries’ activities over the next year.

The U.S. Congress is now deep into its annual budget process, with Senate and house committees and subcommittees working through the Trump administration’s budget requests and drafting the appropriations bills needed to fund the federal government. While lawmakers don’t always successfully pass the full suite of appropriations bills, instead turning to continuing resolutions to avoid a government shutdown, the appropriations process offers lawmakers the most direct opportunity to craft policy for federal agencies.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA designates critical habitat for Indo-Pacific coral species

July 22, 2025 — NOAA has placed new environmental restrictions on more than 58,000 acres of ocean bottom in the western Pacific to further protect endangered coral reefs whose habitats have been degraded by a warming climate and ocean acidification.

Critical habitat designations for five coral species will encompass parts of four marine national monuments and one marine sanctuary, according to NOAA. The areas include atolls off American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marinara Islands, northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Remote Islands Area.

“The final designations support the recovery of these reef-building coral by protecting the areas containing the habitat characteristics the corals need to reproduce, spread, settle, and mature,” NOAA said of the habitat designations, which come 11 years after the corals received Endangered Species Act protection.

Read the full article at E&E News

NOAA and Partners Launch Next-Generation Coral Restoration Following Florida Coral Bleaching

July 22, 2025 — Healthy coral reefs are vital to the survival of thousands of marine species and provide $6.3 billion in local sales and 71,000 jobs annually (PDF, 29 pages). But rising ocean temperatures are pushing these ecosystems to the brink. That’s why NOAA is investing in cutting-edge technology to create more heat-resilient corals.

In the wake of Florida’s severe 2023 coral bleaching event, NOAA and its partners are launching new strategies to restore reefs and prepare them for a hotter future. At the heart of this effort is NOAA’s Mission: Iconic Reefs. It’s an ambitious long-term initiative to boost coral cover from just 2 percent to 25 percent across seven key sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

In 2023, the Office of Habitat Conservation awarded $16 million to the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science for a project applying emerging science and technology to coral breeding and restoration. The goal: to grow and outplant corals better equipped to withstand future bleaching. Key approaches include:

  • Selective breeding of corals that survived the 2023 bleaching to pass on heat-tolerant traits
  • Breeding Florida’s remaining elkhorn corals with heat-adapted corals from warm-water reefs in Honduras (this work was funded through a previous NOAA award)
  • Pairing baby corals with beneficial symbiotic algae and probiotic bacteria to improve their ability to withstand future bleaching
  • Bioprinting coral babies—embedding coral larvae, algae, and bacteria in a protective hydrogel to increase settlement and survival
  • Rearing baby corals in high-temperature environments to condition them to tolerate warmer waters

This work is funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is also supporting similar efforts by other Mission: Iconic Reefs partners. Mote Marine Laboratory and the Coral Restoration Foundation are:

  • Breeding and rearing coral species that withstood the 2023 bleaching
  • Accelerating the outplanting of massive brain and boulder coral species, which fared much better than branching corals like elkhorn and staghorn during the 2023 bleaching
  • Expanding the capacity to store genetically diverse and heat-tolerant corals for future restoration

Many other partners and individuals support the Mission: Iconic Reefs program.

Finding a New Way Forward

Before the 2023 bleaching event, Mission: Iconic Reefs prioritized the outplanting of branching corals like elkhorn and staghorn at reefs in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. But a 2024 assessment on outplanted corals revealed that fewer than 22 percent of staghorn corals survived the bleaching, and less than 5 percent of the elkhorn remained alive.

In the face of this devastating impact, NOAA and its partners—alongside coral restoration groups from around the world—came together to chart a new path forward.

“I’ve never seen so many dedicated people rise to the occasion and say, ‘We have to try harder,’” says Maddie Cholnoky, Mission: Iconic Reefs implementation manager. “These incredible organizations are sharing knowledge, science, and lessons learned. It’s inspired us to take those insights and help create adaptive tools for our partners and for the mission.”

In February, NOAA staff joined partners from the Coral Restoration Foundation, Mote Marine Laboratory, and Reef Renewal USA to mark the fifth anniversary of the initiative. They celebrated by outplanting new corals propagated from survivors of the 2023 bleaching event.

“We’ve done a fantastic job across so many organizations of preserving genetic diversity, which will be important in future outplanting efforts,” says Dr. Katey Lesneski, Mission: Iconic Reefs’s research and monitoring coordinator. “We have a lot of confidence that the corals will continue to do well even in future warming conditions.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Court upholds rule requiring fishing boat owners to pay regulators

July 18, 2025 — A federal court has upheld the government’s ability to require commercial fishing boat owners to pay for monitors aboard their vessels, a year after the Supreme Court took up the case and broadly curbed federal agencies’ authority.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled Tuesday that a NOAA Fisheries rule was lawful under the primary U.S. fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).

Senior Judge William Smith said the court must exercise its independent judgment on whether an agency acted within its authority.

Read the full article at E&E News

Senate passes Alabama-backed bill to block illegal red snapper and tuna imports into the U.S.

July 18, 2025 — A bill aimed at protecting local fishermen from illegally caught fish being sold in the U.S., passed the Senate with the support of both senators from Alabama.

The Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act, co-sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), instructs the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to create a standard method of identifying the country of origin for red snapper and some species of tuna that is imported into the United States.

Read the full article at WHNT

Guam, CNMI marked as ‘critical habitats’ for threatened corals species

July 18, 2025 — Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, together with select areas of American Samoa, Hawaii and remote parts of the Pacific, have been designated as critical habitats for five threatened coral species.

The final rule, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, states that 18 specific marine habitats in American Samoa, Guam, the CNMI, the Pacific Remote Island Areas, and Hawaii — encompassing a total of about 237 sq km — are named critical habitats pursuant to the Endangered Species Act.

NOAA denied the U.S Navy’s request to exclude the Ritidian Point Surface Danger Zone complex in Guam from critical habitat designation.

The final rule takes effect on August 14.

Critical habitats are areas occupied by endangered species and possess the physical or biological features essential to their conservation.

Areas designated “critical habitats” may require special management considerations or protection to support the recovery of endangered corals.

The designation does not create new restrictions that close off these areas.

Read the full article at Marianas Variety

Trump’s proposed NOAA cuts meet Senate appropriators’ opposition

July 16, 2025 — Members of Congress are expressing renewed support for the nation’s weather forecasting system after deadly flooding in Texas and elsewhere put the focus on cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Trump administration proposed cutting NOAA’s fiscal 2026 budget to $4.5 billion — a 27 percent, nearly $1.7 billion reduction from the estimated fiscal 2025 spending.

But Senate appropriators from both parties highlighted the importance of NOAA, and particularly the National Weather Service housed within it, in a meeting last week.

Read the full article at Roll Call

Seafood workers, supporters rally at Fulton market against Empire Wind

July 16, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative hosted a July 15 rally at its Hunts Point facility in the Bronx to protest the Empire Wind energy project, now under construction around traditional fishing grounds off New York.

“Offshore wind is not a supplement to our industry, it is a direct replacement,” Nicole Ackerina, CEO of the Fulton cooperative, said in a joint statement after the rally with union workers, commercial fishermen from New York and New Jersey, and coastal advocates.

“These projects will eliminate access to vital fishing grounds, destabilize our seafood infrastructure, and trade American jobs for short-term foreign-backed construction contracts.”

Fulton employs 1,200 full-time workers, including 500 Bronx residents, most of them union members, said Ackerina.

“Our industry feeds America. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reported that in 2022, New York’s seafood industry supported nearly 70,000 jobs and over $9.2 billion in sales. New Jersey supported more than 72,000 jobs and $12.9 billion in sales. This is not expendable.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Trump’s NOAA pick stands by budget cuts, calls staffing ‘a top priority’

July 10, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a panel of U.S. senators on Wednesday that he would make it “a top priority” to fill staffing shortages created by recent firings and buyouts across the National Weather Service, while also standing by the administration’s proposal to make drastic cuts to weather and climate research budgets.

In a confirmation hearing imbued with concern over how to prevent disasters like the deadly Texas floods, Neil Jacobs shared ideas such as using satellites to improve severe weather warnings and “modernizing” NOAA’s weather radios, which use radio signals to broadcast emergency information. Jacobs was not asked to weigh in on what may or may not have contributed to the disaster in Texas. But he stressed a desire to see the more than 120 Weather Service forecast offices across the country be fully staffed.

As Jacobs answered senators’ questions, he signaled a future in which the agency’s sprawling weather and climate research enterprise could be diminished and more closely tied to the process of weather forecasting. And he repeatedly hinted at opportunities for government scientists to collaborate with the private sector, something that Republican strategists emphasized in the policy plan known as Project 2025.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

New Autonomous Vehicle Helps Advance Understanding of the Deep Ocean and its Critical Minerals

July 8, 2025 — During a recent expedition led by the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute  (OECI), with support from NOAA Ocean Exploration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), testing of a new autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) resulted in advancement to uncrewed systems technologies and the collection of images of manganese nodule-covered seafloor in ultra-deep waters near the Mariana Trench.

Built by New England-based startup Orpheus Ocean  , the small-footprint “Orpheus AUV” is advancing our understanding of some of the planet’s least explored regions at water depths up to 11,000 meters (6.8 miles). These areas include geological settings that may contain marine critical minerals such as polymetallic nodules, which are of interest to marine scientists, resource managers, and industry.

Field-testing of the new AUV took place during an expedition on Ocean Exploration Trust’s Exploration Vessel Nautilus  east of the Mariana Trench. The vehicle successfully completed several dives to depths exceeding meters (3.5 miles), imaging polymetallic nodules on the seafloor during two dives. These are the first direct observations of these sites and help NOAA, USGS, and BOEM refine their understanding of the resources that they are tasked with characterizing and managing.

A predecessor to Orpheus Ocean’s AUV was originally developed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and its evolution from prototype to operational vehicle has been supported over several years by NOAA Ocean Exploration and OECI. Orpheus Ocean, a startup company founded in 2024, aims to expand access to these unique, small-footprint robots to supercharge our ability to collect meaningful data that can ensure sound policy decisions about these unique environments.

Read the full article at NOAA Ocean Exploration