Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Legislative seafood industry task force finalizes report to forward to fellow lawmakers

January 30, 2025 — A joint legislative task force centered on bolstering Alaska’s seafood industry has forwarded its in-depth report after voting to make its amended version official on Wednesday.

State lawmakers, who shared a draft version of the report earlier this month, are making multiple recommendations to try and alleviate what they called a crisis in our state, citing some 18 different fisheries disasters within the last decade or so.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report released this past fall showed the seafood industry suffered a $1.8 billion loss from 2022 to 2023 alone, with about $191 million in state and local tax revenues for Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California combined.

“This gives the public a very pointed direction of what we’re looking at,” said Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, of the task force report. “Now is the time that we have to roll up our sleeves, and develop good policy, and make sure that we are not creating loopholes and missing some things along the way.”

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Council Recommends 2025 Rec Measures for Cod and Haddock; Participates in MRIP Listening Session; Receives Survey Update

January 30, 2025 — The following was released New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council voted on Western Gulf of Maine cod and Gulf of Maine haddock recreational fishing measures when it met January 28-30, 2025 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The measures are recommendations to NOAA Fisheries for the 2025 groundfish fishing year, which begins on May 1.

The Council also: (1) received an update on the Fishing Effort Survey conducted by NOAA Fisheries under the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP); and (2) participated in a public listening session about NOAA’s collaborative initiative to re-envision recreational fishing data collection partnership approaches.

The Council’s fishing year 2025 recommendations for Atlantic cod are based on the new understanding of cod stock structure. Cod is now being assessed as four stock units, which are color-coded in the map below.

The Council addressed Southern New England cod in December 2024 under Framework Adjustment 69. The framework also establishes a regulatory process for the GARFO regional administrator to set Eastern Gulf of Maine cod and Georges Bank cod measures. The Council’s intent is for the measures to be equivalent to Western Gulf of Maine cod. This authority is a temporary regulatory provision for 2025 only.

The Council took up Western Gulf of Maine cod and Gulf of Maine haddock in January. Here is the full package of recreational recommendations resulting from both the December and January Council meetings.

Analysis: What does the commerce secretary do?

January 29, 2025 — The U.S. secretary of commerce oversees the smallest but arguably most complex of all Cabinet-level departments.

Established as a distinct entity in 1913, it has evolved into a sprawling organization with 13 bureaus spanning a wide variety of critical areas that include weather forecasting, conducting the census, estimating gross domestic product, managing fisheries, promoting U.S. exports, setting standards for new technology and allocating radio frequency spectrum. It is even home to one of America’s eight uniformed military services, the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps with its own fleet of ships, aircraft and 321 commissioned officers. Its main mission is to monitor oceans, waterways and the atmosphere in support of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

As a result, there is no other Cabinet position that has to engage with lawmakers in Congress across so many disparate technical issues, committees and stakeholders. This medley reflects both the historical evolution of the U.S. economy and a degree of political happenstance.

I served at the Commerce Department in several roles, including as chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration, management and budget, and have watched several administrations attempt to craft an overarching strategic narrative around this diverse set of missions.

Besides the difficult job of formulating a unifying strategy for the department’s many activities, I believe there are three specific challenges in particular that await the next secretary, a position that requires Senate confirmation.

Read the full article at PBS

MAINE: $2M in grants secures Maine’s fishing legacy

January 29, 2025 — Back in October, Maine’s fishing future received a significant boost when U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King, alongside Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, announced over $2 million in grant funding for workforce development.

The funding, awarded through NOAA’s Young Fishermen’s Development Program (YFDP), is directed toward two local fishing organizations dedicated to training the next generation of Maine’s commercial fishermen and women.

The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA) will receive $1,771,092 to develop an online knowledge hub packed with educational content for young fishermen and women. The resources will focus on career development, industry training, and wellness, helping new entrants to the industry navigate the work and the challenges of physical and mental health on the water.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US House passes SHARKED Act for the second time

January 29, 2025 — Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have passed a bill directing NOAA Fisheries to establish a task force to tackle shark depredation – the partial or complete removal of a hooked fish from an angler’s line by a shark.

The Supporting the Health of Aquatic systems through Research, Knowledge, and Enhanced Dialogue (SHARKED) Act was first introduced in 2023 and initially passed the House in February 2024. However, the legislation was not considered in the U.S. Senate, and died with the end of the 118th Congress earlier in January.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Researchers assess damage done to marine life by California wildfires

January 27, 2025 — Heavy smoke, ash and debris from Southern California’s raging wildfires blowing and drifting far offshore are creating a toxic threat to marine life, scientists are warning.

Crew members aboard a NOAA research vessel reported conditions ranging from yellow-colored skies as far as 100 miles offshore to impenetrable smoke that required deck workers to don masks and goggles.

NOAA’s Noelle Bowlin, director of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program, who has been in daily contact with the vessel, said crew members reported “giant pieces of confetti everywhere” on the ocean surface and white-colored plankton nets used for research turning “completely black and coated in tons of soot and ash and burned material.”

Read the full article at E&E News

FLORDIA: US lawmakers from Florida want to keep NOAA from shutting down Atlantic red snapper season

January 24, 2025 — Two Florida Congressmen — a Republican and a Democrat — and the state’s now-senior U.S. senator want to throw a bone to red snapper anglers off the Atlantic coast.

Rep. John Rutherford, R-Jacksonville, Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee, and Republican Sen. Rick Scott have introduced the Red Snapper Act to stop the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from “unilaterally closing the red snapper fishery in the South Atlantic until reliable and accurate data” is gathered from an independent study entitled the South Atlantic Great Red Snapper Count.

According to a news release from Rutherford’s office, over the past decade, charter captains, anglers and businesses have successfully replaced the red snapper stock.

Rutherford described last summer’s one-day season of red snapper fishing as “a confounding, ridiculous, draconian measure that greatly affected local economies and livelihoods,” including in St. Augustine.

“Anglers are seeing more red snapper off the coast of Northeast Florida than ever before,” he said in the release. “Widespread bottom closures that threaten Northeast Florida’s fishing economy are not the answer. Accurate data that helps produce informed policy is.”

Read the full article at the St. Augustine Record

NOAA withdraws proposed rule intended to strengthen penalties on IUU fishing

January 23, 2025 — NOAA has withdrawn a proposed rule intended to further crack down on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. 

The rule, first proposed in 2016, was intended to strengthen regulations that protect against IUU fishing by amending or bolstering other rules already in force, such as the Agreement on Port State Measures – a U.N. treaty intended to help port states cooperate in the fight against IUU fishing.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Federal fisheries study finds new climate-resilient genetic diversity in crab stocks

January 21, 2025 — Results of new genetic research on Alaska red king crab stocks – included in the depressed Gulf of Alaska fishery – suggest the species has previously undetermined genetic diversity, making these crab more resilient to climate change.

Researchers at the NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center collaborated with Cornell University, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on the study involving whole genome sequencing data on red king crab across Alaska.

The benefit of genome sequencing over previous methods is that it’s akin to reading the full story of an organism’s makeup rather than just a chapter or two, said the study report released on Jan. 2.

Red king crab inhabit diverse environments, from coastal bays in the north to open sea shelves in the Bering Sea, as well as small bays and fjords fed by glacial melt in the Gulf of Alaska and Southeast Alaska. This environment generally includes the Gulf of Alaska, Southeast Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, the Eastern Bering Sea, Norton Sound and the Chukchi Sea. Scientists previously hypothesized that king crab in these regions are divided into three genetic groups: Gulf of Alaska/East Bering Sea, Southeast Alaska, and Aleutian Islands/Norton Sound.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Five SoMAS Research Projects Receive Funding from New York Sea Grant

January 21, 2025 –New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has awarded approximately $2.15 million to support 10 research projects — five of which are based at Stony Brook University — that will directly address multiple high-priority community, economic and environmental objectives.

The two-year projects — administered by NYSG and funded through the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Sea Grant’s federal parent agency, represent a range of stakeholder-driven topics to benefit residents across a number of New York’s coastal geographies.

Below are the five Stony Brook research projects that will receive funding.

Lead PIs: Michael Doall, Associate Director for Bivalve Restoration, and Christopher Gobler, Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation, Distinguished Professor, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS)

To help ensure the future viability of shellfisheries in New York, researchers are conducting analyses to characterize the dynamics of past, present, and future temperature and dissolved oxygen in New York estuaries and identify ideal and inhibitory locations across New York for each species, allowing managers, fishers, and aquaculturists to prepare for future change.

Read the full article at Stony Brook University