Saving Seafood

The Gulf Stream is speeding up. Scientists say that’s a big deal

September 15, 2026 — For years, the story about Atlantic Ocean currents has been one of slowdown, which will cause irreversible change. A new NOAA study complicates it.

Researchers at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and the University of Miami analyzed 31 years of continuous satellite measurements and found the Gulf Stream weakened for a decade and then sped up for about a decade.

Where this happened

The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current that originates around the Gulf and Caribbean and pushes warm water to the North Atlantic and Europe. But the behavior of the Gulf Stream was not uniform.

Shenfu Dong, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, mentioned that the shift was “far more dynamic than a simple slowdown narrative.”

Long story short, one of the segments of the Gulf Stream, the current upstream leg that moves between Florida and the Bahamas, stayed consistent. But when the stream separates from the coast and runs free in the open Atlantic, that is where the speed-up occurs.

Read the full article at The Weather Channel

Atlantic tuna, swordfish and shark fisheries see mixed outlook

September 9, 2026 — Commercial fishermen from New England to the Southeast are seeing a mixed picture across Atlantic highly migratory species, with several major tuna and swordfish stocks remaining in relatively strong conditions while some shark stocks continue to face rebuilding challenges.

NOAA Fisheries released its 2024- 2025 Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation Report for Atlantic Highly Migratory Species on Sept. 4, providing an updated look at tunas, swordfish, billfish, and sharks managed along the East Coast, Gulf, and Caribbean.

For fishermen, the report offers more than a snapshot of stock health. It also shows where commercial landings and revenues are moving, including a notable decline in overall highly migratory species revenue in 2024.

Tuna stocks show some of the stronger signs

Among the major commercial species, North Atlantic albacore remained well above its biomass target and was not considered overfished or subject to overfishing. Atlantic yellowfin and western Atlantic skipjack were also classified as not overfished, with overfishing not occurring.

The picture is less straightforward for bluefin.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: The Fragile Hope for Salmon Recovery in Maine

March 30, 2026 — On a bright March morning, Paul Christman hiked through deep snowdrifts on the bank of Avon Valley Brook in the western Maine mountains, leading a crew wearing waders and shouldering unwieldy backpacks.

One crew member carried a pack basket loaded with battered funnels crafted from stovepipes, duct tape and plumbing pipes. Another lugged a water pump. The last brought a cooler full of thousands of fertilized Atlantic salmon eggs.

The stream was mostly iced over, but Mr. Christman, a marine scientist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, found some open water on the brook, a tributary to the Sandy River.

“This is a really good spot,” Mr. Christman said. “The river is picking up velocity and shoving that water into the gravel, so we’re going to set up right here and do it.”

For 20 years, Mr. Christman has been working to restore salmon to this Sandy River watershed, where they were eradicated after dams built in the 1800s blocked their passage.

The strategy is producing thousands of juvenile salmon that migrate to the North Atlantic, but just a handful that return to Maine to spawn as adults.

Now, a $300 million project to remove or modify four dams downstream on the Kennebec River is infusing the work with new hope, possibly clearing the way for salmon to swim freely up to the Sandy River within a decade.

Hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon once flooded rivers in New England. For millenniums, the fish have been valued by Native Americans in the region as sustenance and cultural touchstones.

But marine survival rates for Atlantic salmon have plummeted over the last 35 years, for reasons that are complex and interwoven, including changing prey, shifting currents and warming waters.

More recently, they’ve been regarded by anglers as the “king of fish.” But by 2000, their numbers had fallen so low that federal regulators listed them for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Early recovery efforts focused on the last remaining populations of Atlantic salmon in the United States, all in Maine, in the Penobscot River, and the Mid-coast and Down East regions.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Study projects major changes in North Atlantic and Arctic marine ecosystems due to climate change

July 10, 2024 — New research predicts significant shifts in marine fish communities in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans as a result of climate warming.

The Nord University-led study projects a change in key  biomass and suggests that Arctic demersal fish will be at risk of local extinction by the end of the century if no  refugia is available at eastern latitudes.

The international team of experts, involving Newcastle University experts, analyzed data from 16,345 fishery-independent trawls conducted between 2004 and 2022, focusing on 107 marine fish  in the northeast Atlantic, including the Barents Sea. They used advanced modeling techniques to project changes in species distribution and biomass under three future climate scenarios for the years 2050 and 2100.

Read the full article at phys.org

Too little, too late: the desperate search for cod babies

January 23, 2024 — Guðrún Bjarnadóttir Bech sings to herself while she sorts through baby fish with a pair of tweezers. “Ding! Ding! Ding!” she suddenly bursts out. “That’s a plaice,” she says – her reaction testament to how few she sees.

It is 2021 and Bech is working onboard the Jákup Sverri, a Faroese marine research ship that’s trawling for juvenile fish around the Faroe Islands in the north Atlantic to assess the state of populations including haddock, sand eel and Norwegian pout.

But there is one juvenile the scientists onboard are desperate to find: cod. The babies are minute, each measuring between 2mm and 25mm (0.08in to 1in). The smaller the individual, the more difficult it is to distinguish between different species. But as cod grow, their eyes and heads get bigger, and their skin, though still quite transparent, turns grey-green.

Read the full article at The Guardian

An intense marine heat wave is setting ocean temperature records in the North Atlantic

September 8, 2022 — It’s not just land seeing record heat waves.

Ocean waters in the Northern Hemisphere have been unusually warm in recent weeks, with parts of the North Atlantic and northern Pacific undergoing particularly intense marine heat waves.

Sea surface temperatures in these regions hit record levels this summer, said Dillon Amaya, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Parts of the Pacific and North Atlantic have been anywhere from 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) warmer than average at times, conditions that have not been observed since record keeping began roughly six decades ago.

Read the full article at NBC News

MAINE: Maritime Shorts: Ghost gear, Marine Patrol, road map plans

August 18, 2021 — A study in southwest Nova Scotia estimated that abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear, also known as ghost gear, account for more than $175,000 Canadian dollars in commercial losses annually.  

A team of researchers conducted 60 trips to retrieve the gear in one of Canada’s most productive lobster fishing regions and removed 7,064 kilograms of ghost gear – two-thirds of which were lobster traps. Those traps continued to capture species and the scientists found 239 lobsters and seven groundfish in the study. Buoys, rope and dragger cable were also retrieved and were either disposed of or repurposed. 

Most of the traps were believed to be less than 4 years old, though the oldest found was from 1987. Based on their markings, some of the debris likely originated from the U.S., likely traveling northward from the southern Gulf of Maine, according to the study. Tires, party balloons and a fan belt were also recovered.  

“While fishers often attempt to retrieve gear when it becomes lost during the fishing season, regular retrieval is challenging due to regulatory requirements, relocation issues, and lack of resources,” the study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin last month read. “Thus, allowing (abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear) to persist, potentially continues to indiscriminately catch commercially valuable lobsters and other species and contributes to the growing problem of marine debris.” 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

How ‘ghost’ fishing gear affects at-risk species and fisheries’ bottom line

August 5, 2021 — Southwest Nova Scotia is one of Canada’s most productive lobster fishing region, spanning more than 21,000 square kilometers and contributing a significant portion of the country’s lobster supply.

With a busy fishery, though, has come the growing challenge of abandoned, lost and discarded fishing  (ALDFG)—a collection of , ropes, hooks, cables and other fishing-related equipment that drift through the water column or litter the ocean floor. It is a global problem, but one that hasn’t been widely quantified.

Researchers at Dalhousie University wanted to find out how much gear might be in the Southwest Nova Scotia (SWNS) fishing zone and how it might be affecting the existing fishery. Their recently published  provides the first preliminary assessment of environmental and economic impacts of ALDFG on the commercial  industry in the area.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Two endangered right whales entangled in fishing gear in Gulf of St. Lawrence

July 14, 2021 — A New Brunswick-based whale-rescue team says two North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are entangled in fishing gear, a dangerous situation experts say risks killing the endangered animals.

Mackie Greene, director of the Campobello Whale Rescue program, said Wednesday the group tried last week to free Snow Cone, a female who had been originally spotted entangled off Cape Cod, Mass., last spring. Greene said an American crew removed some of the rope at the time but had to call off their efforts because of bad weather, adding that the whale continued north into Canadian waters.

“She was spotted in May in the Gulf and we responded and were able to get 30 feet of rope off of the whale, but she still has rope wound in her mouth, in her baleen and some trailing lines,” he said.

Greene said his team was able to remove three pieces of rope last week, adding that the animal appears healthy and is feeding; however, he said, more rope needs to be removed. “Snow Cone has a pretty sad story,” Greene said. “She’s a female, born in 2005. The year before last she had a calf and was coming north and the calf was run down and killed.”

He says a larger, mature whale that’s also entangled in gear has been spotted about 80 kilometres northeast of Shippagan, N.B., in an area where all the right whales appear to be congregated. Unlike Snow Cone, Greene said it appears the whale likely became entangled in the Gulf — perhaps the result of fishing gear that had been lost.

Read the full story at The Toronto Star

Norway salmon farming moves to cleaner waters: indoors

July 2, 2021 — Hundreds of thousands of salmon swim against the current in southeast Norway—in massive indoor tanks away from the nearest river as the controversial industry increasingly embraces greener land-based facilities.

The fish live in two gigantic pools inside an inconspicuous industrial building in Fredrikstad owned by a company that plans to raise salmon in similar settings even further afield, in the United States.

By raising the salmon on land, the industry is attempting to move away from the river or sea cages that have invited criticism over a slew of issues.

The problems run from costly mass escapes to fish infected with sea lice treated with chemicals to mounds of faeces and feed piling up on the seabed below the farms.

“At sea, you depend on the almighty for many things. In a land-based farm, we are suddenly the all-powerful one,” Fredrikstad Seafoods general manager Roger Fredriksen told AFP.

Read the full story at PHYS.org