NOAA Archives - Page 13 of 519

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

See How Marine Heat Waves Are Spreading Across the Globe

June 9, 2025 — Unusual heat waves have occurred in all of the major ocean basins around the planet in recent years. And some of these events have become so intense that scientists have coined a new term: super marine heat waves.

“The marine ecosystems where the super marine heat waves occur have never experienced such a high sea surface temperature in the past,” said Boyin Huang, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in an email.

The seas off the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland experienced an unusually intense marine heat wave, one of the longest on record, starting in April and the temperature rise happened much earlier in the year than usual. Australia and its iconic coral reefs were recently struck by heat waves on two coasts.

Scientists define marine heat waves in different ways. But it’s clear that as the planet’s climate changes, the oceans are being fundamentally altered as they absorb excess heat trapped in the atmosphere from greenhouse gases, which are emitted when fossil fuels are burned.

Hotter oceans are causing drastic changes to marine life, sea levels and weather patterns.

Some of the most visible casualties of ocean warming have been coral reefs. When ocean temperatures rise too much, corals can bleach and die. About 84 percent of reefs worldwide experienced bleaching-level heat stress at some point between January 2023 and March 2025, according to a recent report.

Last year, the warmest on record, sea levels rose faster than scientists expected. Research showed that most of that rise in sea levels came from ocean water expanding as it warms, which is known as thermal expansion, not from melting glaciers and ice sheets, which in past years were the biggest contributors to rising seas.

Excess heat in the oceans can also affect weather patterns, making hurricanes more likely to rapidly intensify and become more destructive. In the southwest Pacific, last year’s ocean heat contributed to a record-breaking streak of tropical cyclones hitting the Philippines.

“If we understand how global warming is affecting extreme events, that is essential information to try to anticipate what’s going on, what’s next,” said Marta Marcos, a physicist at the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain.

Dr. Marcos was the lead author of a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found that climate change has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of marine heat waves in recent decades.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Northwest tribes say Trump’s proposed salmon budget cuts violate treaty rights

June 9, 2025 — Northwest tribal officials say the Trump administration’s latest budget proposal would violate their treaty rights to catch salmon.

Among other cutbacks, the White House’s proposed 2026 budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would eliminate the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, the leading source of money for restoring the Northwest’s struggling salmon runs.

The Trump administration is asking Congress, which controls federal spending, to reduce NOAA’s funding to nearly half of its 2024 levels. While the budget proposal lacks many details, it singles out the $100 million salmon recovery fund and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which had a $638 million budget in 2024, for elimination.

“If the plug is pulled, the tribe will have to do something to protect our treaty rights,” said David Troutt, head of the Nisqually Tribe’s natural resources department. “And if we don’t have the ability to do it collaboratively, we’ll look to other means, and it may drive us more quickly and more regularly into the courts.”

Federal treaties signed in the 1850s guarantee Northwest tribes the right to fish and hunt in their traditional territories in exchange for giving up most of their land.

“It’s in case law. It’s in treaties, which are the supreme law of the land, so I don’t know what more obligation than that there could be,” Lummi Nation Councilmember Lisa Wilson said.

“The guarantees were made back in the 1850s to be sure that we will be able to catch salmon forever,” Troutt said. “Well, apparently, forever ends in 2026.”

The relationship between tribes and the federal government could switch from collaborating on watershed restoration to fighting in the courts.

Tribal and state officials say the federal salmon fund is critical to keep the region’s salmon and orcas from going extinct.

“It really anchors salmon recovery across the West Coast,” said Erik Neatherlin, head of the governor’s Salmon Recovery Office in Washington state.

West Coast states harbor 28 federally threatened and endangered salmon populations.

“What will suffer are the salmon,” Neatherlin said.

And the people who rely on them.

Read the full article at OPB

NOAA Fisheries Announces Changes to the Management of Red Snapper in the South Atlantic Region and the 2025 Fishing Seasons

June 6, 2025 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Key Messages:

NOAA Fisheries announces changes to management of red snapper in the South Atlantic through a final rule for Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region.
Amendment 59 was developed by NOAA Fisheries on the Secretary’s behalf under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and is based on the latest population assessment for South Atlantic red snapper which determined the population is undergoing overfishing, not overfished, but not yet rebuilt.
Amendment 59 and the final rule modify management of South Atlantic red snapper by revising the overfishing limit, acceptable biological catch, annual catch limits, and the proxy for determining red snapper overfishing.
During development of Amendment 59, NOAA Fisheries held multiple in-person hearings and received extensive comments during the public comment period; most of which opposed all or part of a discard reduction season proposed in the draft amendment to increase commercial and recreational red snapper catch limits and the recreational fishing season length.
In response to this input, and because a new red snapper stock assessment is underway, which will take into account the results of the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program and other new information about the red snapper stock, NOAA Fisheries removed the discard reduction area closure and several other proposed actions from further consideration.
This will provide the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council another opportunity to consider other management measures to reduce dead discards and increase red snapper fishing opportunities in a future amendment through an open, public process.
The final rule also announces that the commercial sector will open on July 14, 2025, and will close at 12:01 a.m., local time, on January 1, 2026, unless the commercial catch limit is met or projected to be met before this date. The recreational sector will open for two days on July 11 and 12, 2025.

When Rule Will Take Effect:

The final rule is scheduled to publish on June 11, 2025. Regulations will be effective 30 days after the final rule publishes.

What This Means:

Amendment 59 and the Final Rule

NOAA Fisheries developed Amendment 59 on the Secretary’s behalf to comply with the Magnuson-Stevens Act and a court order because the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council 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.
The changes implemented through Amendment 59 are based on an update of the 2021 SEDAR 73 population assessment, which includes data through 2023.
Amendment 59 specifies an overfishing limit of 551,000 fish, an acceptable biological catch of 509,000 fish, and a total annual catch limit equal to 509,000 fish; all of which include both landings and discards.
The landed catch limits specified by this final rule include a commercial annual catch limit of 102,951 pounds whole weight, and a recreational annual catch limit of 22,797 fish (equivalent to 263,815 pounds whole weight).
Amendment 59 revises the proxy used to determine if red snapper is undergoing overfishing from a fixed value to a more flexible definition that reflects the best scientific information available at the time an overfishing determination is made.

2025 Red Snapper Fishing Seasons

The commercial sector will open for harvest at 12:01 a.m., local time, on July 14, 2025, and will close at 12:01 a.m., local time, on January 1, 2026, unless the commercial catch limit is met or projected to be met before this date.
The recreational sector will open for harvest for two days – at 12:01 a.m., local time, on July 11, 2025, through 12:01 a.m., local time, on July 13, 2025.
The commercial and recreational season lengths for the 2025 fishing year are determined using the revised sector ACLs in this final rule.

Amendment 59 can be found on our website here: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/amendment-59-fishery-management-plan-snapper-grouper-fishery-south-atlantic-region.

This bulletin serves as a Small Entity Compliance Guide, complying with section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What action is NOAA Fisheries taking?

NOAA Fisheries has prepared Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region (Amendment 59) to end and prevent overfishing of red snapper and support rebuilding objectives.

What is a Secretarial Amendment?

Amendment 59 is a Secretarial Amendment. A Secretarial Amendment is an amendment to a fishery management plan that is prepared by NOAA Fisheries on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary). This Secretarial Amendment (Amendment 59) has amended the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) provides the Secretary authority to act if a Fishery Management Council (Council) fails to develop and submit to the Secretary, after a reasonable period of time, needed conservation and management measures for a species. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council was notified in July 2021 that red snapper was undergoing overfishing, and has not taken action pursuant to the MSA to end the overfishing.

The Secretarial Amendment is similar to other amendments to fishery management plans except NOAA Fisheries prepares the amendment, then provides the amendment to the Council (and the broader public) for consideration and comment.

What actions are included in the amendment?

The amendment and supporting analyses evaluate a range of alternative options for setting and managing red snapper catches at levels that end and prevent overfishing and support rebuilding objectives. The amendment contains three actions:

Action 1. Revise the Fishing Mortality at Maximum Sustainable Yield (F_MSY) Proxy for Red Snapper Overfishing

Action 2. Modify the Acceptable Biological Catch for Red Snapper

Action 3. Consider Reducing Dead Discards Set Red Snapper Annual Catch Limits

Why were actions that were in the proposed rule not included in the final rule?

The proposed rule and Draft Environmental Impact Statement had five additional actions that are not in the final rule:

Action 4. Establish New Management Measures to Achieve Dead Discard Targets

Action 5. Modify Commercial Management Measures to Further Optimize Yield

Sub-Action 5a. Increase the Commercial Trip Limit for Red Snapper

Sub-Action 5b. Modify the Commercial Fishing Season for Red Snapper

Action 6. Modify the Recreational Fishing Season for Red Snapper to Further Increase Fishing Opportunities/Optimize Yield

Action 7. Establish an Annual Experimental Studies Program

Action 8. Modify the Fishing Year for Red Snapper

NOAA Fisheries removed Actions 4 through 8 from further consideration in the amendment in view of the fact the new stock assessment will be available soon and because public commenters voiced substantial concerns about the impacts of the discard reduction season. Therefore, these actions would no longer be implemented in this final rule.

NOAA Fisheries added a new preferred annual catch limit alternative in Action 3 that was not in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement or Proposed Rule. The new alternative is based on the results of the SEDAR 73 Update Assessment, and would not require additional measures to reduce dead discards, as found in the discard reduction season alternatives contained in Action 4. The new alternative would set the total annual catch limit for red snapper equal to the acceptable biological catch of 509,000 fish. The total annual catch limit of 509,000 fish would include 34,000 fish (landings) and 475,000 fish (dead discards). Retaining the current allocation percentages from the Snapper-Grouper Fishery Management Plan of 28.07% for the commercial sector and 71.93% for the recreational sector, the new commercial annual catch limit will be 102,951 pounds whole weight, and the recreational annual catch limit will be 22,797 fish.

Sign Up for Text Message Alerts – Find Out About Immediate Openings and Closures

NOAA’s Text Message Alert Program allows you to receive important fishery related alerts via text message (SMS). Standard message and data rates may apply. You may opt-out at any time. Text alerts you may receive include immediate fishery openings and closures and any significant changes to fishing regulations that happen quickly.

Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico) Recreational: Text GULFRECFISH
Gulf of America Commercial: Text GULFCOMMFISH
South Atlantic Recreational: Text SATLRECFISH
South Atlantic Commercial: Text SATLCOMMFISH
Caribbean: Text CARIBFISH

Permits Mailbox: The Permits Office in St. Petersburg, Florida, now has a Permits mailbox in the front lobby (263 13th Ave. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701). You can now drop off original permits for permit transfers. Envelopes with information labels will be provided so that your documents can be attached to the correct application. The mailbox will be checked daily. For more information, contact the Permits Office at 877-376-4877.

Contacts:

Quick Glance Contact List for the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office

Media Contact: Allison Garrett, 727-551-5750

Recreational Fishing Coordinator: Sean Meehan, 727-385-5202

Red Snapper Communications Specialist: Lauren Westcott 727-249-5881

NOAA-funded research finds ecological, economic benefits from oyster reef restoration

June 6, 2025 — A new suite of research has found efforts to restore oyster reefs on the U.S. East Coast has knock-on effects benefitting the economies of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Two sets of research, one by the North Carolina Coastal Federation and another by Morgan State University’s Patuxent Environmental and Aquatic Research Laboratory in Maryland, U.S.A, found restoring oyster reefs would have direct economic benefits for the surrounding economies. The restoration projects use local quarries to supply rock to serve as the base of restoration projects, and once established the oyster reefs benefit the surrounding ecosystem which in turn boosts both commercial and recreational fishing.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW JERSEY: NOAA Says Longterm Environmental Impact of New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Projects Not Certain

June 5, 2025 — A recent federal symposium has highlighted significant scientific gaps in the ability to assess the environmental impacts of offshore wind development, raising questions about how New Jersey’s rapidly advancing offshore wind projects could affect local marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

At the “State of the Science” symposium on offshore wind last year, officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) presented what they described as serious “constraints” in efforts to build ecosystem models for offshore wind development (OWD).

These findings, disclosed in court filings this week, underscore concerns surrounding current and future offshore wind construction along the New Jersey coast.

Read the full article at Shore News Network