Saving Seafood

Oceana appeals court ruling over Gulf of Alaska environment

December 15, 2025 — Oceana served notice on Monday, Dec. 8, of its intent to appeal a federal district court dismissal of its lawsuit contending that federal fishery managers failed to protect corals, sponges, and other seafloor habitats in the Gulf of Alaska.

The notice of appeal was filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The international advocacy entity for ocean conservation, represented by Earthjustice, charged in its lawsuit filed in August of 2024 in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Alaska, that the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council have consistently failed to minimize adverse effects to essential fish habitats from bottom trawling.  Bottom trawling involves huge, weighted nets as long as a mile in length being dragged up to 15 miles along the seafloor, damaging and often destroying everything in their path.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

EU IUU Coalition warns bloc is leaving its borders wide open to illegal seafood imports

November 24, 2025 — The European Union is failing to keep illicit seafood products from entering its borders, despite having some of the strongest illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing restrictions on paper, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).

The NGO – along with Oceana, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Nature Conservancy, and WWF EU, all of which comprise the E.U.’s IUU Fishing Coalition – has warned in a new report – “Beyond CATCH: Why E.U. import controls still fail to keep illegal seafood out of the market” – that this flow of IUU products into the bloc is creating “dangerous loopholes” that threaten consumer trust, fair competition, and global efforts to combat fisheries crime.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Oceana poll: Americans support expanded seafood transparency, traceability

August 22, 2024 — Oceana, a Washington, D.C., U.S.A.-based ocean conservancy nonprofit, released the results of a new poll it conducted revealing Americans support stronger safeguards around the seafood they eat, including greater transparency in seafood supply chains and curtailing illegal fishing activities.

The poll found 90 percent of respondents strongly support holding imported seafood to the same standard as U.S.-caught seafood. Just below that level of support, 88 percent of those polled want harsher penalties for companies that import or sell illegally caught seafood, and 85 percent agreed that the seafood they purchase should be completely traceable from the fishing boat to the dinner plate.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Lawsuit claims fishery managers have failed to adequately protect Alaska’s coral gardens

August 21, 2024 — Until about 20 years ago, little was known about the abundance of colorful cold-water corals that line sections of the seafloor around Alaska.

Now an environmental group has gone to court to try to compel better protections for those once-secret gardens.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by Oceana in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, accused federal fishery managers of neglecting to safeguard Gulf of Alaska corals, and the sponges that are often found with them, from damages wreaked by bottom trawling.

Bottom trawling is a practice that harvests fish with nets pulled across the seafloor.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service “ignored important obligations” to protect the Gulf of Alaska’s seafloor, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, the lawsuit said.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

US court determines government’s West Coast sardine rebuilding plan is unlawful

May 7, 2024 — A U.S. district court has ruled that NOAA Fisheries’ plan for rebuilding sardine populations along the West Coast is unlawful, ordering the agency to develop a new plan.

Conservation group Oceana, represented by Earthjustice, first sued NOAA Fisheries in 2021 after it become clear Pacific sardine populations had collapsed despite the government’s rebuilding plan. From 2006 to 2020, the population dropped by more than 98 percent, according to Oceana. In 2019, NOAA Fisheries placed Pacific sardines on its overfished list.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Scientists examine Gulf of Alaska sea floor to see effects of bottom trawling

June 8, 2022 — A group of researchers is hoping that data collected from the Gulf of Alaska’s sea floor will shed new light on the effects of bottom trawling.

Scientists from the conservation group Oceana, which is based in Juneau, spent eight days aboard a research vessel circumnavigating the Kodiak archipelago late May. Jon Warrenchuck is a senior scientist and fisheries campaign manager with Oceana.

“The Gulf of Alaska is a very special place and a very productive ecosystem,” Warrenchuck said. “Our timing of our survey here in the spring means we saw just an abundance of life, from the phytoplankton to the fish to the birds feeding at the surface.”

The focus of the trip, though, was to document life at the very bottom of the sea to better understand the impacts of commercial trawling, Warrenchuck said.

Read the full story at KTOO

Oceana report calls for SIMP to cover all species, tougher US stance against IUU fishing

February 3, 2022 — A report released by Oceana on Tuesday, 1 February, calls on the U.S. to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), saying that the federal legislation designed to prevent fraudulently labeled products and specimens harvested from illegal fishing practices from entering the country includes too many loopholes.

The 36-page report notes a report by the U.S. International Trade Commission found that of the seafood imported into the U.S. in 2019, USD 2.4 billion (EUR 2.13 billion) worth was fished illegally. Examples of illegal fishing include crews harvesting fish in unpermitted areas, exceeding catch limits, mislabeling products, and using forced labor.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Scientists pen letter to Congress urging SIMP expansion

December 16, 2021 — More than 100 scientists signed a letter sent to Congress on Monday, 13 December, urging lawmakers to ensure that all seafood products imported into the United States are caught using legal means.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is often associated with human trafficking and other human rights abuses, and distant-water fishing forces vessel owners and operators to extend trips to “achieve a sizeable catch,” the university professors, research fellows, and scientists claimed in the two-page letter. In order to get that kind of catch, some operators will use forced labor and harvest fishing stocks beyond allowable limits, they alleged.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Report finds China becoming more secretive about its fishing subsidies

October 29, 2021 — A new study prepared for campaign group Oceana suggests 85 percent of China’s subsidies to its fleet are harming the sustainability of fish stocks.

The report, “China’s Fisheries Subsidies Propel Distant-Water Fleet,” found that while China has reduced its fuel subsidies to the distant-water fleet, it is becoming more secretive about releasing data on direct and indirect subsidies to fishing firms.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Marine wildlife may suffer the consequences of SoCal’s oil spill for years to come

October 8, 2021 — “We’re scared to see what we’re going to find out,” Sarah Glitz, a marine scientist for Oceana, said of the Oct. 2 oil spill off the Southern California coast.

Glitz, like many scientists, has watched in horror as the ecological disaster unfurls along the coastline where about 126,000 gallons of crude oil seeped into the Pacific Ocean and indefinitely closed several Orange County beaches and fisheries.

Veterinarians are in the field tending to the injured animals that wash ashore. But it may be weeks, months, even years before the full extent of the disaster and impact on birds and marine mammals is known, Glitz said.

Already, 15 oiled birds have been recovered, two of which were dead, the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at  UC Davis reported.

Read the full story at SFGATE