Saving Seafood

OREGON: Pacific Seafood and Oregon regulators are locked in battle over wastewater treatment from its coastal processing plants

September 9, 2026 — Supporting the fishing fleets that fan out to sea from the Oregon coast, there are about three dozen industrial processing businesses that clean, cut and package the products before they’re shipped to consumers around the world.

It’s not a pretty process.

One byproduct of all those fish guts and shellfish innards is wastewater packed with solids and oils, as well as possibly chemicals, bacteria and heavy metals. Whatever isn’t filtered out gets discharged back into the ocean, where it can deplete dissolved oxygen that fish and other aquatic species need to breathe, and can pose risks to public health.

Seafood processing plants have been locked in a battle with environmental regulators over water pollution, with millions of dollars in fines piling up and legal fights that have spanned years. Meanwhile, the business is consolidating and, from an employment standpoint, shrinking.

The fight pits Oregon’s environmental aspirations against one of its legacy industries — one that remains a defining part of life on the Oregon coast even as its footprint contracts.

Read the full article at The Oregonian

OREGON: Oregon to start testing ropeless crabbing gear next spring to stop whale entanglements

August 19, 2026 — Oregon fishermen will begin testing ropeless crabbing technology next spring in an effort to save whales from often-fatal entanglements.

The state since 2021 has taken steps to reduce whale entanglements, including requiring additional late season crabbing tags and limiting how many crabbing pots fishermen can use and how deep they can place them, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Resources Program Manager Justin Ainsworth told the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission in a meeting Friday.

But with whale entanglements increasing, commissioners are turning to two new tools to reduce whale deaths. Rules the commission adopted Friday will require fishermen to share their vessel location with state fishery managers and allow them to test ropeless crabbing gear already allowed in California.

Traditional commercial crabbing gear requires hundreds of traps to sit on the ocean floor, each attached to a vertical line connected to a buoy on the surface. Whales can easily get entangled and injured, often fatally, in those lines, as was the case with a humpback whale freed about 20 miles off the Oregon Coast in late July that wasn’t expected to survive because the entanglement left it unable to feed.

The pop-up gear the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife can begin authorizing as soon as spring 2027, however, stores the rope and buoy with the trap on the seafloor. Fishermen can set a timer or trigger a release mechanism that allows the line to uncoil and buoy to surface to retrieve the catch, ensuring whales and other creatures have a clear path most of the time.

Pop-up gear is currently unlawful because all pot and trap gear must be marked at the surface with a buoy. The proposed rule would allow the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to issue some experimental fishing gear permits as soon as spring 2027, and the commission could consider wider authorization if the tests prove effective.

Read the full article at the Astorian 

OREGON: ODFW Commission revises Dungeness crab fishery rules to address whale entanglements

August 17, 2026 — On Friday, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission revised rules to strengthen the department’s efforts to reducing whale entanglements in Oregon’s Dungeness crab fishery.

The revised rules include electronic vessel monitoring, including the installation of devices that provide a vessel’s location and other data. This requirement will take effect in February 2027.

The Commission also established additional criteria and guidelines for approving experimental fishing gear permits, allowing the exploration of alternative gear for the crab fishery that needs to be tested off the Oregon coast.

Read the full article at OPB

Fishing Vessel Joins Trained Team to Free Injured Humpback Whale 20 Miles off Oregon Coast

August 4, 2026 — An Oregon team joined by experts from Washington and a local fisherman freed a severely entangled humpback whale about 20 miles off the Oregon Coast on July 26. While the team removed all of the gear from the whale, the entanglement left the young whale’s jaw permanently open, leaving it unable to feed and unlikely to survive.

Oregon State University research assistant Craig Hayslip spotted the whale from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter surveying the coast for whales and fishing gear three days earlier. He reported the whale anchored by heavy fishing gear to NOAA’s West Coast Entanglement Hotline, which activates trained responders across the region.

Responders asked local fisherman Poggy Lapham to join the effort and help lift the gear with the hydraulic winch on his boat, F/V Michele Ann. That gave responders access to free the whale from the gear. An online photo catalog identified the whale as a young humpback previously sighted in British Columbia in 2024.

The fishing vessel recovered a tangle of more than 3,000 feet of line, five sablefish pots, and individual commercial Dungeness crab traps from Oregon and Washington. Responders and the fishermen worked together to analyze the gear and evaluate the entanglement. The condition of the gear indicated that it could be derelict or lost gear. NOAA Fisheries is following up with gear owners for more details.

Lapham said the entanglement should be a wake-up call for the fishing industry to ask, “How can we better incentivize gear retrieval and tracking of lost gear to reduce this risk?”

“This is truly a heartbreaker because of the whale’s injuries, but we will learn so much from this case that can help us prevent future entanglements,” said Lauren Saez, who helped coordinate the response for NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “We disentangled the whale safely, got all the gear back, and had great collaboration with the fishing industry. Additionally, we got whale DNA samples from the gear to help identify which population it belongs to. All this information is crucial to understand what happened and what we can do to help prevent future entanglements.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

OREGON: Oregon’s Newest Food Trail Highlights Local Seafood and the People Who Catch It

July 29, 2026 — From dock to plate, the Oregon Coast Seafood Trail puts the people behind the catch at the center of every meal. While much of the seafood consumed in Oregon comes from outside the country, Oregon’s newest trail highlights where you can enjoy Oregon-landed seafood that directly supports local fisheries. The trail guides travelers to vetted eateries, restaurants, seafood markets, food carts and dockside retailers that prioritize local seafood.

Central to the trail is the idea of “Oregon-landed” seafood, meaning the catch was delivered to a port in Oregon. Oregon’s fisheries are among the most sustainably managed in the world, with species like pink shrimp, albacore tuna, groundfish and Dungeness crab certified for responsible harvest. Additional local species — including Pacific halibut, salmon, oysters, clams and sea vegetables — round out the diversity of Oregon’s coastal waters and ensure every meal reflects the region’s bounty.

Each stop along the trail offers a window into the working waterfronts that sustain coastal communities. A dynamic map helps travelers sort stops by region, business type, seasonal events and more. The trail allows visitors to time their trip with the commercial crab season, albacore tuna runs or opportunities to buy directly from the docks. Along the way, visitors can explore coastal eateries, seafood markets and other businesses where transparency, sustainability and local sourcing are part of the story.

Read the full article at South Sound

OREGON: Reconnecting Rivers Boosts Oregon Coast Coho Recovery

June 5, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries supports one of the most ambitious salmon restoration projects on Oregon’s coast: the Salmon SuperHwy. This partnership of more than a dozen organizations works across the Tillamook, Nestucca, and Sand Lake watersheds. It works to restore fish passage at dozens of stream barriers, such as failing road culverts and tide gates. When complete, salmon and steelhead will be able to access 180 miles of habitat that had been blocked for decades.

The benefits of the Salmon SuperHwy project and other coastal restoration work are not just theoretical. Threatened Oregon Coast coho salmon have experienced a dramatic rebound in recent years. NOAA Fisheries Oregon Coast Branch Supervisor Lance Kruzic believes that restoring rivers and streams has helped more coho survive their juvenile life stage and return as adults to spawn.

“Over the last 30 years, substantial funding has been invested in restoring freshwater habitat, and coho have been benefiting,” said Kruzic. “For example, the Tillamook area—which was once one of the toughest places for coho to reach the habitat they needed—is now a bright spot for coho recovery. There’s been a total flip.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries