Saving Seafood

Section 301 tariffs leave US seafood importers with few avenues to avoid rising costs

August 10, 2026 — The latest round of tariffs implemented by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) targeted several countries that heavily produce salmon and shrimp with duty rates between 10 percent and 12.5 percent, leaving U.S. seafood importers with few options for relief from rising costs.

The 60 global economies hit with Section 301 tariffs include top salmon-producing countries such as Norway, Chile, and the U.K., as well as shrimp-producing nations like Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Expert panel predicts salmon supply could be tight in 2026

January 21, 2026 — A panel of salmon industry experts at the Global Seafood Market Conference in Hollywood, Florida, U.S.A., are predicting supplies of farmed salmon could be constrained due to relatively flat production.

Salmon supplies in 2025 were marked by an increase in volume out of Norway, with data shared during the panel indicating the Norwegian Atlantic salmon harvest increased by roughly 11 percent in 2025.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trump’s latest tariff threats would hit more seafood suppliers

January 20, 2026 — U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened a new set of tariffs on eight European countries, potentially impacting the seafood industry and a prior trade deal with the European Union.

In a post on his social media site Truth Social, Trump threatened 10 percent tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Finland starting 1 February over those countries’ decision to station personnel in Greenland. He added those tariffs will be increased to 25 percent on 1 June 2026 unless he receives a deal for the “Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Newly implemented tariffs not altering Norway’s seafood marketing strategies for the US

August 15, 2025 — The U.S. started out 2025 as the top buyer of Norwegian seafood but fell to third place behind Poland and China in July, according to the latest figures from the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC).

NSC Communications Director Martin Skaug told SeafoodSource that while the new tariffs levied by the U.S. on all Norwegian goods might have contributed a bit to July’s shakeup, the NSC is primarily attributing it to the massive volume growth of farmed salmon – both from Norway and other markets this year. Poland’s ascension up the rankings can, therefore, be attributed to the fact it is a country that heavily processes and redistributes salmon to other markets.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW JERSEY: Belford Seafood Co-Op President Says Why He Joined Lawsuit Against Empire Wind Farm

August 12, 2025 — Middletown’s Belford Seafood Co-op joined a host of New Jersey commercial fishing companies in a federal lawsuit against Empire Wind, a wind farm owned by the Kingdom of Norway that is currently under construction 19 miles (17 nautical miles) off Long Branch.

And now today — for the first time — Belford Co-op president and fishing boat captain Richard Isaksen talks about why he is against the wind farm.

“It’s going to interfere with our fishing grounds. We fear we will be stopped from fishing there,” said Isaksen, who lives locally in Middletown. “It changes by season, but those are our prime grounds for fluke, flounder and squid. The underground cables could also disrupt fish.”

Read the full article at the Patch

Leaders fail to address overfishing near Europe at ‘fraught’ international meeting

November 25, 2024 — Mackerel and herring in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, near Europe, have been dramatically overfished for many years, endangering the stocks and creating potential knock-on effects for marine mammals and seabirds that eat them. Members of the multilateral body that manages fishing in the region’s international waters did little to remedy the situation when they met this month.

The North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), whose members are the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom, held its annual meeting in London Nov. 12-15. The body took small steps toward developing an ecosystem-based fisheries management approach and deciding which marine zones to designate as protected in the international “30×30” system.

More notably, the parties continued to leave unaddressed the fundamental governance issues that critics say result in mismanagement of Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) and Atlanto-Scandian herring (Clupea harengus): a lack of transparency and a governance structure that “neuters” NEAFC and allows key management decisions to be made by member states unilaterally or in opaque side meetings.

Disagreements between the parties also bubbled over at the meeting, with the European Union publicly accusing Russian vessels of fishing illegally in NEAFC’s regulatory area, and the other parties of failing to hold Russia to account for it in a statement issued Nov. 21.

“This is the most fraught and most problematic RFMO, to my knowledge,” Ryan Orgera, global director of Accountability.Fish, a Virginia-based advocacy group, told Mongabay just after the meeting, which he attended. “I’ve never seen any systematic, structural issues that are this dysfunctional.”

Read the full article at Mongabay

Northeast Atlantic pelagic stocks in critical danger, with no coastal state agreement in sight

October 4, 2024 — After several years of overfishing, Northeast Atlantic pelagic stocks are reaching a critical point.

Overfishing over the past decade has largely been due to coastal states such as Norway, the U.K., the Faroe Islands, and the E.U. being unable to come to a quota-sharing agreement with every player involved, resulting in unilateral quotas that exceed recommended catch totals from the International Council on Exploration of the Sea (ICES).

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Proximar nets JPY 8.8 billion loan for RAS salmon farm in Japan

February 13, 2023 — Bergen, Norway-based Proximar Seafood has secured JPY 8.8 billion (USD 66 million, EUR 61 million) in financing via a loan offer from a syndicate that includes two Japanese banks for the land-based salmon farm it’s building near Tokyo, Japan.

The offer consisted of a highly confident letter along with a term sheet – which the company said should be “considered a strong statement of comfort from the banks” on providing the financing the company needs for its salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility, currently under construction in in Shizuoka Prefecture. The names of the banks were not released by Proximar. Proximar signed a contract with RAS specialist AquaMaof in early 2020 for a design and build of a facility with a 5,300 MT annual production capacity of gutted salmon in its first phase.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Norway restricting Russian fishing fleet access to ports

October 12, 2022 — New measures restricting Russian fishing boats’ access to Norway to just three ports are being introduced by the Norwegian government.

Norway said it plans to swiftly implement the move to prevent Russian vessels from circumventing sanctions implemented in response to the invasion of Ukraine, according to Norway Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Gene-editing of salmon being studied in Norway

September 15, 2022 — Researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, have used the CRISPR/Cas9 method of gene editing to produce salmon that cannot produce gametes (eggs and sperm), so cannot reproduce.

If produced for commercial purposes, any escaped fish would be unable to breed with the wild salmon population. They would also not experience the issue of early sexual maturation, which can lead to poor meat quality and greater susceptibility to disease, according to Lene Kleppe, a researcher working on the project.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource