Saving Seafood

Washington State River Restoration Project to Revive Salmon Habitat, Support Local Jobs

May 7, 2025 — This spring, NOAA partner the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership broke ground on a large-scale salmon habitat restoration project on the lower East Fork Lewis River in Washington State. This project will support the recovery of threatened steelhead and salmon on one of the few undammed rivers in the Lower Columbia River watershed. It will also inject millions into the local economy and generate hundreds local jobs in construction, heavy equipment operations, trucking, engineering, forestry, and other industries.

In addition, the work will help maintain fishing opportunities that further contribute to the local economy.

Flooding Destroys Habitat

In 1996, Steve Manlow, Executive Director of the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board, watched in horror as a 500-year flood event destroyed crucial salmon and steelhead habitat on the lower East Fork Lewis River. Flood waters breached the levees around nine abandoned gravel mining pits, fundamentally shifting the river’s course.

This once-braided, multi-channel river began flowing through the excavated pits. It formed a series of interconnected warm-water ponds that prevent salmon and steelhead from migrating upstream for much of the year. The river channel deepened, cutting off floodplain habitat and causing severe erosion downstream.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

WASHINGTON: Kitsap part of recovery effort for two Puget Sound marine species

April 30, 2025 — Two key marine species in Puget Sound have become symbols of resilience, thanks to Kitsap-based recovery programs and a senior at Bainbridge High School.

Efforts to restore bull kelp and pinto abalone, both essential parts of the marine ecosystem in Washington, may receive a boost after state leaders in Olympia and at the Department of Fish and Wildlife highlighted recovery efforts this legislative session.

Governor Bob Ferguson signed bill HB 1631 into law, designating bull kelp as the state’s official marine forest. The text of the law is simple and does not come with additional protections for the seaweed, but that’s intentional, explained Betsy Peabody, director of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund — the idea is to create a new state symbol.

“The basic idea is to recognize bull kelp forests as part of our identity — for our state, tribes, ecosystem, economies, communities, our way of life, and really see that,” said Peabody. “Sometimes we’re so enchanted with the things that forests support and feed — the birds, the fish, the orcas, all those wonderful things — that we don’t see the forest that makes those species possible. It really was just trying to make the forests that are foundational to all these incredible marine species more visible.”

Read the full story at the Kitsap Daily News

Trump’s NOAA firings raise doubts for Pacific Northwest fisheries

April 15, 2025 — Owen Liu was hired to help solve a mystery.

Fishers had been plying the Pacific Ocean in search of hake, a species making up one of the most lucrative fisheries on the West Coast.

But the catch hadn’t met expectations for a decade, Liu said.

Liu was tapped last year to unravel the conundrum. He was developing a tool to help understand Pacific hake distribution — before being fired by the Trump administration along with more than 600 other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration probationary employees.

Since then, Liu and his fired colleagues have been caught up in political turmoil, which has landed in federal court and led to rehirings and refirings as recently as last week.

In interviews with The Seattle Times, some of these Western Washington NOAA fisheries scientists described feeling like they’d been in “limbo” or “purgatory” and expressed a desire to get back to work.

Nineteen probationary employees who worked at the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Science centers have been among those hanging in the balance, according to Nick Tolimieri, a union representative for local NOAA employees. There are about 400 people in the bargaining unit across the science centers, Tolimieri said.

The scientists who shared their stories inform and set salmon fisheries quotas and identify priority salmon habitat recovery work. They were hired to forecast climate impacts, like low-oxygen conditions and marine heat, on fisheries and provide data to reduce the risk of whale entanglements, among other things.

The loss of staff comes at a time when climate change is fueling a higher degree of uncertainty for fisheries managers and the fishing communities who depend on them. A study published last week found opportunities to make fish populations and fishing communities more resilient to climate impacts, but authors of the paper say deep cuts to NOAA may jeopardize those opportunities.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. A NOAA fisheries spokesperson said the agency could not discuss “internal personnel and management matters” and “remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public …”

At the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Montlake, scientists are taking on additional work as contracts with janitorial, maintenance and other services lapsed because of Trump administration actions.

They lost their only oceanographer — someone who can untangle complex ocean environmental patterns — and picking up the responsibilities of their other terminated colleagues would require reducing or losing additional services they provide.

The Alaska and Northwest Fisheries Science centers and the two fishery management councils they advise are global leaders in developing sustainable approaches to fisheries management, said Bill Tweit, who represents Washington on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Read the full article at The Chronicle 

Researchers use light traps to illuminate Dungeness crab decline

March 24, 2025 — Researchers are waging a quiet battle in the Pacific Northwest to protect one of the region’s most iconic species — the Dungeness crab.

Using light traps, scientists at the MaST Center Aquarium in Des Moines are gathering data that could help safeguard the future of Washington’s most valuable wild-caught fishery.

The study aims to fill in gaps in the biological data on Dungeness crabs. Researchers hope by monitoring the early stages of their development, they can better predict crab populations and avert crises like the one that closed the fishery in South Puget Sound a few years ago.

According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribal and recreational crabbing plummeted in South Puget Sound in the last 15 years, dropping from 214,404 pounds harvested in 2012 to only 8,679 pounds in 2017.

“That was a big wake-up call for fisheries, co-managers, and part of the reason the Pacific Northwest Crab Research Group (PCRG) formed,” said Ally Galiotto, Puget Sound Restoration Fund. “We still don’t know exactly what happened. It’s a sobering reality that sudden drops in population could happen elsewhere, and we won’t necessarily know why or when they will happen.”

To capture crab larvae, a light trap is deployed from docks in Washington and British Columbia. Each trap consists of a transparent bucket with an LED light strip that activates at night. The light mimics moonlight, drawing in the larvae, while a funnel prevents larger creatures from entering the trap. Once the larvae are captured, the samples are sifted, counted, and analyzed before being returned to the water.

Read the full article at KREM

Conservationists sue feds to protect Pacific Northwest salmon populations

February 19, 2025 — Conservation groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday morning against the National Marine Fisheries Service for missing its deadline to determine if spring-run Chinook salmon in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California warranted protection under the Endangered Species Act. The organizations behind the lawsuit seek a court order to compel the Fisheries Service to issue a finding within a suitable time frame.

“These iconic fish are at risk of disappearing from our coastal rivers forever if the Service doesn’t act quickly,” Jeremiah Scanlan, a legal fellow at the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “Spring-run Chinook salmon badly need protections, but instead, the agency has taken the lazy river approach and drifted past its own deadlines.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, Native Fish Society, Umpqua Watersheds, and Pacific Rivers claim the Fisheries Service violated federal law when it failed to issue a timely finding within 12 months of their petition asking for three Chinook salmon populations to be listed as “threatened” or “endangered” — the Oregon Coast Chinook salmon, the Southern Oregon and Northern California Coastal Chinook salmon, and the Washington Coast spring-run Chinook salmon.

“The agency’s failure to meet the deadlines delays crucial, lifesaving protections for these species, increasing their risk of extinction,” the groups said in their lawsuit.

Chinook salmon, also known as “king salmon,” are the largest of all Pacific salmon species. Although the fish were once abundant in the river basins of the Pacific Northwest, their populations have declined sharply in recent years and are now only a fraction of their historical size.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

WASHINGTON: US state of Washington reaffirms ban on net pen aquaculture

January 8, 2025 — The State Board of Natural Resources for the U.S. state of Washington has voted to finalize a ban on finfish farming in state waters, codifying a ban that was first implemented unilaterally in 2022.

Momentum for a state ban on net pen aquaculture grew after the 2017 collapse of a Cypress Island fish farm operated by aquaculture company Cooke, which released hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon into state waters. Cooke was fined for the collapse, and ultimately, the state legislature passed a law ending Atlantic salmon farming in the state.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

2024 saw some good news for Pacific Northwest salmon

December 2, 2024 — Zombie kokanee tumbled downstream as new waves of crimson fish dashed through the riffles making the journey to their spawning grounds.

The creek was alive with hundreds of these landlocked sockeye amid the biggest return of the salmon in the Lake Sammamish watershed in a decade.

Just a few years ago the fish almost blinked out. But efforts by King County, the Snoqualmie Tribe and others to restore and conserve habitat and a conservation hatchery program appear to have helped pull them from the brink. 

In addition to these little red freshwater fish, some oceangoing salmon have returned in big numbers.

It started with a record run of sockeye on the Columbia River, then a record number of threatened Hood Canal Summer chum returned to the Union River, and now fall chum to Pipers Creek in Seattle.

Orca researchers observed salmon leaping from Puget Sound, possibly fueling a feeding frenzy for the endangered southern resident orcas.

It looks like it’s shaping up to be the biggest Puget Sound fall chum return in 15 or 20 years, said Kyle Adicks, intergovernmental salmon manager with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. The state has also seen strong catches and hatchery returns for coho in Puget Sound, which saw near all-time lows about a decade ago.

“It’s great to see that the salmon are still here and if things line up they can do well,” Adicks said.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

With dams gone, Klamath salmon start long road to recovery

October 4, 2024 — Salmon watchers in the Pacific Northwest are warning it could take at least a decade for fish in the Lower Klamath River to recover following the nation’s largest-ever dam removal.

The breaching of four hydroelectric dams restored more than 400 miles of free-flowing waterway to the region and came after decades of negotiations among a host of parties, including tribal nations, states, the federal government, a power company and nonprofits.

Months of aggressive demolition allowed the Klamath River to return to its main channel for the first time in more than a century in August, as work continued through Wednesday to remove hydropower facilities and other remaining infrastructure.

Read the full article at E&E News

US promises $240 million to improve fish hatcheries, protect tribal rights in Pacific Northwest

July 26, 2024 — The U.S. government will invest $240 million in salmon and steelhead hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest to boost declining fish populations and support the treaty-protected fishing rights of Native American tribes, officials announced Thursday.

The departments of Commerce and the Interior said there will be an initial $54 million for hatchery maintenance and modernization made available to 27 tribes in the region, which includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska.

The hatcheries “produce the salmon that tribes need to live,” said Jennifer Quan, the regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region. “We are talking about food for the tribes and supporting their culture and their spirituality.”

Some of the facilities are on the brink of failure, Quan said, with a backlog of deferred maintenance that has a cost estimated at more than $1 billion.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Climate change is causing low-oxygen levels in Pacific Northwest ocean, report says

June 17, 2024 — A recent report out of Oregon State University paints a picture of how ocean oxygen levels have decreased in the Pacific Northwest over the years.

The report found near-bottom levels of dissolved oxygen in the waters off of Washington, Oregon and Northern California in 2021. JPR’s Roman Battaglia talked to Jack Barth, professor of oceanography at OSU, about his report and what these low oxygen levels mean for marine life.

Roman Battaglia: One thing I noticed in this study was that the levels seem pretty different in different parts of the coast. For example, in northern California and the southern Oregon coast, the oxygen levels seem much higher than they are in southern Washington and the northern Oregon coast. But why is there so much variability?

Jack Barth: That was the second big outcome of the paper, is that there really are regional differences. And importantly, we can explain them by oceanographic processes. So that higher oxygen level off southern Oregon, that’s because the continental shelf is relatively narrow. So it can flush water on and off pretty effectively from the deep ocean and flush out that low oxygen water so it stays high. And it looks like a pretty good area for fisheries. As you get into the wider continental shelves off central Oregon and Washington, the water sticks around longer; it doesn’t get flushed off as effectively. So that keeps those low oxygen waters near the bottom on those wider shelves.

Read the full transcript at OPB