Saving Seafood

Maine Sea Grant and University of Maine Announce $2 million in new NOAA awards to support innovative American lobster research and outreach

January 20, 2026 — The Maine Sea Grant Program at the University of Maine is pleased to announce its receipt of $1.4 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), awarded to support research and outreach activities of the NOAA Sea Grant-funded American Lobster Initiative.

With this new four-year award, Maine Sea Grant and its regional partners will support collaborative research to address complex challenges facing the American lobster fishery. The initiative will also synthesize research findings so they are accessible and actionable for fishermen, policymakers and the public, and support place-based technical assistance within the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and Southern New England region.

The full $2 million in NOAA funding also includes $600,000 in second-year support for four 2025-26 American lobster research awards.

The American lobster (Homarus americanus) is among the nation’s most valuable fisheries, with approximately 113 million pounds landed in 2024, valued at $715 million. The industry supports thousands of Maine families across the fishing and seafood supply chain and faces growing uncertainty driven by environmental and market change. This underscores the need for collaborative research to understand how lobsters are responding to changing conditions and how best to sustain the fishery.

Since 2019, Sea Grant’s NOAA-funded American Lobster Initiative (ALI) has worked to close critical knowledge gaps about this iconic species, strengthening the fishery’s resilience to biological, economic and social impacts of ecosystem change. The program has funded 40 projects to date and supports a national research competition alongside a regionally coordinated extension network to ensure that communities across the region benefit from these investments.

“This new federal investment in lobster research is terrific news for Maine’s fishermen, marine researchers, and coastal communities, and it underscores why I advocated so strongly for the restoration of Maine Sea Grant’s funding last year. The research efforts led by Maine Sea Grant help inform policy makers and support our working waterfronts, strengthening Maine’s blue economy and helping to ensure that our state’s fisheries remain sustainable and competitive for generations to come,” said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.

With the new $1.4 million award, Maine Sea Grant will begin to administer the initiative’s competitive research competition, which was previously administered by the NOAA National Sea Grant Program.

Read the full article at the University of Maine

Bill to Support Maine’s Lobster Industry Heads to President’s Desk

January 16, 2026 — U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, secured significant funding and legislative language to support Maine’s lobster industry in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) Appropriations bill that passed the Senate today. The bill, which was approved by the House of Representatives last week, now heads to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

“This funding will support Maine’s lobster industry by improving the incomplete and imprecise science and research upon which the federal government relies. The flawed data being used to inform regulations has created unnecessary, burdensome requirements for Maine lobstermen and women,” said Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Appropriations Committee. “As Chair of the Appropriations Committee, I worked hard to ensure this funding was included in the final funding bill.”

Funding and legislative language advanced by Senator Collins includes:

North Atlantic Right Whale: $30 million for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission for Right Whale related research and monitoring.

  • Language is also included directing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to work with Canada to develop risk reduction measures that are comparable in effectiveness to U.S. measures.

National Sea Grant Program: $80 million for the National Sea Grant Program. Last year, the Department of Commerce announced that Maine Sea Grant was being defunded. At the urging of Senator Collins, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick directed NOAA to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the work to be performed by Maine Sea Grant to ensure that it focuses on advancing Maine’s coastal economies, working waterfronts, and sustainable fisheries.

American Lobster Research: $2 million for Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank American lobster research through Maine Sea Grant.

  • $300,000 to support a cooperative research program to collect biological, fishery, and environmental data for American lobster and Jonah crab using modern technology on commercial fishing vessels.
  • Language is also included that directs this research to be carried out through a partnership of state agencies, academia, and industry with a focus on “stock resilience in the face of environmental changes” and “topics necessary to respond to newly implemented or future modifications to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan.”

Gray Zone: Report language directing NOAA to work with Canadian and state fisheries officials to develop a cooperative fisheries management plan in the Gray Zone.

In addition, Senator Collins secured more than $73 million for Congressionally Directed Spending projects in Maine through the CJS Appropriations bill. Of these projects, $1 million is included to expand the American Lobster Settlement Index collector survey at the University of Maine.

Read the full article at Senator Susan Collins

Annual Arctic report card documents rising temperatures, melting glaciers

January 7, 2026 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued its annual Arctic Report Card, which documents the way rising temperatures, diminished ice, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers and vegetation shifts are transforming the region and affecting its people.

The agency has released the report for 20 years as a way to track changes in the Arctic.

“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years that comprise the last decade marking the 10 warmest years on record,” Steve Thur, NOAA’s acting administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research and the agency’s acting chief scientist, said at a news conference Dec. 16.

The report card is a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 13 countries, with numerous coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was officially released at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans, where Thur and other officials held the news conference.

The report is the first under the second Trump administration, at a time when the federal government’s commitment to documenting Arctic climate change has diminished: The president has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and federal departments are cancelling climate change-related research and projects, as well as scrubbing climate information from public view.

Read the full article at Wrangell Sentinel 

A rare whale is having an encouraging season for births. Scientists warn it might still go extinct.

January 6, 2026 — One of the world’s rarest whale species is having more babies this year than in some recent seasons, but experts say many more young are needed to help stave off the possibility of extinction.

The North Atlantic right whale’s population numbers an estimated 384 animals and is slowly rising after several years of decline. The whales have gained more than 7% of their 2020 population, according to scientists who study them.

The whales give birth off the southeastern United States every winter before migrating north to feed. Researchers have identified 15 calves this winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

That number is higher than two of the last three winters, but the species needs “approximately 50 or more calves per year for many years” to stop its decline and allow for recovery, NOAA said in a statement. The whales are vulnerable to collisions with large ships and entanglement in commercial fishing gear.

Trump signs Save Our Seas Act 2.0 Amendments Act into law

January 6, 2026 — U.S. President Donald Trump has signed the Save Our Seas Act 2.0 Amendments Act into law, strengthening and reauthorizing a federal marine debris cleanup program for another five years.

“This bill ensures critical work continues to combat plastic pollution before it reaches our ocean and supports the Marine Debris Foundation, strengthening efforts to reduce marine debris and protect coastal communities and wildlife,” NGO Ocean Conservancy said in a social media post. “This is a major step forward to advance NOAA’s mission and a clear example of what’s possible when leaders come together to defend science-based solutions for our ocean. Ocean Conservancy is proud to have long championed the Marine Debris Program as part of our broader NOAA defense work.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Environmental groups’ excessive court challenges are about raising funds, not protecting fisheries

January 2, 2025 — When you think of environmental groups working to protect iconic wildlife the mind’s eye often provides a romantic setting with activists defending dolphins on the high seas.

In reality, the bulk of that work is done in places like Charlotte, where millions of dollars are raised in boardrooms with those very images as the centerpiece. The story behind the story is that such campaigns may be much more about money than marine mammals.

In 2024 the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), forcing the government to implement a portion of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA.) Now they have rushed back to the court that oversaw their original settlement, ostensibly to complain about separate MMPA litigation.

Having pressured NOAA, after more than a decade of delays, into applying the protective policy, they now object to a different court settlement that allows a small handful of crab fisheries in four countries an additional 180 days to come into compliance with the rule.

Read the full article at the Charlotte Observer

 

ALASKA: Alaska fisheries in 2025: turmoil, economic and environmental challenges and some bright spots

December 26, 2025 — For Alaska’s fishing industry and fishing-dependent communities, 2025 was a year of turmoil and uncertainty, much of it imposed by ideological pursuits from the new Trump administration.

The short-lived agency called the Department of Government Efficiency hacked away at federal funding for science across the board. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in particular was in its crosshairs; the Heritage Institute’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump administration heaped scorn on NOAA, saying its National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” The NMFS’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which does the bulk of the research on which fishery managers depend, was among the agencies that suffered deep budget and staffing cuts.

The prospect of more cuts is unsettling, some officials said. “I guess now we’re getting to a point that I’m getting really concerned and almost freaked out about how much data that we’re potentially losing that we’re used to having,” Anne Vanderhoeven, a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, said on Dec. 4 during that body’s December meeting.

Read the full article at the Kodiak Daily Mirror

Federal government, opponents battle over right whale rule

December 23, 2025 — The federal government is trying to fend off a lawsuit challenging a boat speed limit designed to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, which migrate each year to calving grounds off Northeast Florida and other parts of the Southeast.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys Friday filed a motion asking a Florida federal judge to uphold the speed limit in a challenge filed by boat captain Gerald Eubanks, who was fined $14,250 for exceeding the limit while piloting a boat from Florida to South Carolina in 2022.

Friday’s motion and a competing motion filed in October by Eubanks’ attorneys seek summary judgments, which would effectively resolve the case without going to trial. U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell on Friday scheduled an April 10 hearing.

The lawsuit, which names as defendants the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, challenges the fine and the legitimacy of a rule that limits speeds to 10 knots for vessels that are over 65 feet during certain times and places off the East Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, includes the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full article at WGCU

Former NOAA biologist publishes comprehensive history of Menhaden Fishery

December 23, 2025 — A new book, “Menhaden: A Biologist’s Thirty-Two Year Journey with the Fish and the Fishery,” by Morehead City resident Joe Smith, offers what Palmetto Publishing calls “an exhaustive look at the menhaden fisheries.” The book covers the history of both Atlantic and Gulf coast menhaden fisheries while offering an insider view of the industry and the biological knowledge of what is frequently referred to as “the most important fish in the sea.”

Smith said the book is “kind of a celebration of menhaden.”

Few are better qualified to celebrate the fish than Smith, who spent more than 30 years working with the National Marine Fisheries Service at the NOAA Beaufort Laboratory as part of the Menhaden Program launched in 1955.

Read the full article at Carteret County News-Times