Saving Seafood

Eastern North Pacific Gray Whales Continue Decline After Downturn During Unusual Mortality Event

June 19, 2025 — The eastern North Pacific population of gray whales that migrates along the West Coast of the United States has continued to decline, with reproduction remaining very low. Two new Technical Memorandums from NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center report the estimated population size and calf productivity in 2025.

The initial population estimate of gray whales, following an Unusual Mortality Event that ended in late 2023, suggested that their numbers may have begun to rebound last year. However, the most recent count from winter 2025 instead reveals a continuing decline. The new count estimates an abundance of about 13,000 gray whales, the lowest since the 1970s.

Only about 85 gray whale calves migrated past Central California on their way to feeding grounds in the Arctic earlier this year. That’s the lowest number since records began in 1994. Low calf numbers since 2019 indicate that reproduction has remained too low for the population to rebound.

The estimates are based on models that combine visual sightings from NOAA Fisheries research posts in Central California with assumptions about how the whales migrate. The assumptions create some margin for error, but the models indicate that in 2025 the population is most likely between 11,700 and 14,500. They indicate the number of calves produced was between 56 and 294.

The annual estimates are most valuable in revealing population trends over time rather than pinpointing the number of whales or calves in a given year, scientists said.

Past Resilience Wanes

Scientists attributed the Unusual Mortality Event from 2019 to 2023 to localized ecosystem changes that affected the Subarctic and Arctic feeding grounds. Most gray whales rely on prey in this region for energy to complete their 10,000-mile round-trip migration each year. The changes contributed to malnutrition, reduced birth rates, and increased mortality. Related research has linked fluctuations in the gray whale population to the availability of prey in its summer feeding grounds in the Arctic.

The gray whale population has proved resilient in the past, often rebounding quickly from downturns such as an earlier UME from 1999 to 2000. That makes the ongoing decline in abundance and reproduction following the more recent UME stand out, said Dr. David Weller, director of the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division at the Science Center and an authority on gray whales.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Murkowski, Whitehouse, Pingree, and Moylan reintroduce legislation to address ocean acidification

June 18, 2025 — The following was released by the office of Senator Lisa Murkowski:

Today, U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Representatives Chellie Pingree (ME-01) and James Moylan (R-GU) reintroduced the bipartisan, bicameral Coastal Communities Ocean Acidification Act. This legislation provides resources for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to collaborate with local and tribal entities to research and monitor ocean acidification.

“The impacts of ocean acidification on our coastal communities cannot be understated, particularly on our blue economy,” said Senator Murkowski, Co-Chair of the Senate Oceans Caucus. “This legislation takes a holistic approach to understanding ocean acidification, encouraging experts from every walk of life to work together and ensure that our oceans stay healthy.”

“The oceans are in trouble. Ocean acidification caused by carbon pollution is harming marine ecosystems and coastal industries like aquaculture,” said Senator Whitehouse, Co-Chair of the Senate Oceans Caucus. “Our bipartisan legislation will assist in monitoring changes to the oceans and help us better understand how to protect Rhode Island’s blue economy from acidifying waters.”

“We’re seeing the effects of ocean acidification in real time—from threatening lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine to eroding coral reefs in tropical waters. We now know that parts of our oceans have reached dangerous acidification levels earlier than expected, threatening entire ecosystems.” said Congresswoman Pingree, ranking member of the House Appropriations Interior and Environment Subcommittee. “Coastal communities like those in Maine are on the frontlines of this crisis, and our bipartisan Coastal Communities Ocean Acidification Act ensures they won’t face it alone. This bill gives coastal communities the science, tools, and support they need to build resilience and protect ocean industries that support millions of jobs. I was proud that my colleagues in the House passed this crucial bill last Congress, it’s long past time Congress sends this bill to the President’s desk.”

“As an island territory in the heart of the Pacific, Guam is on the front lines of climate and oceanic change. Ocean acidification threatens not just our marine ecosystems, but also our cultural traditions, local fisheries, and food security,” said Congressman Moylan. “This legislation is about giving coastal communities like ours the tools and partnerships we need to understand and respond to these growing challenges. I’m proud to co-lead this bipartisan effort to ensure a healthier ocean for future generations.”

This legislation would direct NOAA to collaborate with and support state, local, and tribal entities that are conducting or have completed ocean acidification vulnerability assessments. The bill strengthens partnerships between NOAA and a wide range of stakeholders involved in ocean acidification research, such as indigenous groups, coastal communities, state and local resource managers, fishery management councils and commissions, and the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). The Coastal Communities Ocean Acidification Act passed the House in the 118th Congress.

A data-driven model to help avoid ecosystem collapse

June 16, 2025 — Tipping points are the death of ecosystems. So scientists watch as warning signs gradually worsen until an ecosystem reaches the point of no return, when animal populations suddenly collapse. While tipping points can sometimes be predicted, what comes next is often shrouded in mystery, stymying efforts to prevent the impending disaster or prepare for what’s to come.

A new study by a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) introduces a method for modeling the murky future beyond a tipping point. The paper, published on June 13 in PNAS, demonstrates how this model can act as a “crystal ball” into the future of ecosystems—providing enough lead time to intervene before there’s nothing left to save.

“It gives us this fundamental insight into predicting what’s going to happen in the future,” said Eric Palkovacs, a senior author on the paper and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. “That allows us to either do the things necessary to avoid that transition, or if we’re going to experience it, to plan for it and figure out the best ways to cope with it.”

Seeing the future

In healthy ecosystems, species populations fluctuate in predictable ways: Sea urchins feed on a kelp forest, otters then feed on the urchins, and the kelp regrows. But if the ecosystem loses equilibrium, disaster can suddenly strike. If warming waters drive sea urchins to kill off a kelp forest, the ecosystem suddenly crosses a tipping point that can doom all the species it supports. The result is a new regime of population fluctuations that can be hard to correct.

“You have many of these cases where the system can live in different states. You have a state with lots of kelp, and a state without kelp,” said Lucas Medeiros, the study’s lead author and a former postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Cruz.

Currently, researchers have some methods for predicting what lies beyond an ecosystem’s tipping point, but each approach has its tradeoffs. Some existing methods make predictions using machine-learning algorithms. However, these approaches require large datasets, which often don’t exist for research on ecosystems, where data might be collected yearly or even less frequently.

Read the full article at UC Santa Cruz

Trump’s NOAA cuts clash with seafood competitiveness goals

June 12, 2025 —  During a Republican-led hearing touting U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on restoring American seafood competitiveness, Democrats and assembled witnesses questioned whether the administration’s actions align with its stated purpose.

“I hope to work with the administration and my colleagues and the majority to achieve that goal, but I don’t see how the administration is going to succeed when it spent the last four months haphazardly cutting the funding and workers that our fisheries rely on,” U.S. Representative Val Hoyle (D-Oregon) said during a House Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee hearing title “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

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

Policymakers to Reauthorize the Young Fishermen’s Development Act

June 11, 2025 — Representatives Seth Moulton (D-MA), Nick Begich (R-AK), Jill Tokuda (D-HI), Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa), and Jared Golden (D-ME) have introduced a bill to reauthorize the Young Fishermen’s Development Act for an additional five years.

The Young Fishermen’s Development Act’s national competitive grant program supports the training and education of the nation’s next generation of commercial fishermen. The program authorizes grants of up to $200,000 per year (for up to three years per project) through NOAA’s Sea Grant Program to support new and established local and regional training, education, outreach, and technical assistance initiatives for young fishermen.

The program, which was signed into law in 2021, is currently authorized through 2026. Congressmen Moulton and Begich’s bipartisan bill would extend the authorization of the program for another five years, to 2031.

Read the full article at ECO Magazine

Final rule for Amendment 59 sets stricter red snapper limits

June 10, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries has finalized new regulations for the South Atlantic red snapper fishery through Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region, tightening limits and restricting access for both commercial and recreational fishermen in the 2025 season.

According to NOAA Fisheries, the red snapper population in the South Atlantic is “undergoing overfishing, not overfished, but not yet rebuilt,” prompting the agency to revise catch limits and season dates through this final rule. The changes are based on the most recent update to the SEDAR 73 stock assessment, which includes data through 2023.

“NOAA Fisheries developed Amendment 59 on the Secretary’s behalf to comply with the Magnuson-Stevens Act and a court order,” the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) stated, “because the SAFMC failed to develop and submit, after a reasonable period of time, needed conservation and management measures to end and prevent overfishing of the South Atlantic red snapper population, as required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

Read the full article at The National Fisherman

NOAA reverses course on winter Florida groundfish ban

June 10, 2025 — In a victory for sport fishermen, NOAA has scrapped a proposed rule that would have banned fishing for 55 fish species off Florida’s Atlantic coast during the winter to aid the recovery of overfished red snapper, one of the region’s most prized sport species.

In a bulletin announcing a suite of changes to federal management of South Atlantic red snapper, NOAA said it had axed the three-month ban — called a “discard reduction season” — on dozens of species that share the same near-bottom habitat with snapper, citing heavy opposition from fishing interests.

Those species include black sea bass, red grouper, vermillion snapper, gag, scamp, greater amberjack and gray triggerfish.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Trump’s cuts to fisheries science have industry and conservation groups sounding the alarm

June 10, 2025 — Alaska’s fishing industry and environmental groups don’t always agree. But this week, they were on the same side — both warning that recent cuts to federal fisheries science could jeopardize Alaska’s oceans.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which helps set fishing rules in federal waters, wraps up its meeting Tuesday in Oregon.

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials attending the meeting, the Alaska Science Center has lost 51 employees since February — about a quarter of its staff.

“You can’t lose 51 people and not have that impact our ability to provide our products in a meaningful and timely way,” said Bob Foy, who directs NOAA’s science operations in Alaska. “It’s been a challenging process.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

‘Ticking time bomb’: Ocean acidity crosses vital threshold, study finds

June 10, 2025 — The deep oceans have crossed a crucial boundary that threatens their ability to provide the surface with food and oxygen, a new study finds.

Nearly two-thirds of the ocean below 200 meters, or 656 feet, as well as nearly half of that above, have breached “safe” levels of acidity, according to findings published on Monday in Global Change Biology.

The fall in ocean pH is “a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies,” Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the United Kingdom’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said in a statement.

The study was funded in part by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that has been targeted for steep cuts by the Trump White House, in large part because of its role in investigating climate change.

Some of the biggest changes in deep water are happening off the coast of western North America, home to extensive crab and salmon fisheries, the study found.

Read the full article at The Hill