November 6, 2025 — Federal and state stakeholders are getting close on an update to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement – a voluntary accord that sets goals for conservation and clean water – laying out desired outcomes for some of the region’s fisheries.
First established in 1983, signatories to the agreement include the governments of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New York, and the District of Columbia, along with the Chesapeake Bay Commission and federal agencies.
October 21, 2025 — The Chesapeake Bay region opened more than 300 miles of rivers and streams for migratory fish in 2022-2023, a tenfold increase from the preceding two-year period.
Thirteen dams were taken down during that span, but more than two-thirds of the total mileage came from the demolition of the Oakland Dam on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Another key removal was the Wilson Creek Dam in Virginia.
“In addition to restoring native and recreational fisheries, these projects can improve wildlife habitat along stream corridors and reduce long-term maintenance needs of aging infrastructure, flooding and public safety hazards to local communities,” said Ray Li, a fishery biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
August 22, 2025 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced a voluntary recall of frozen shrimp products due to possible contamination with Cesium-137 (Cs-137), a man-made radioisotope that can elevate cancer risks through longer term, repeated low dose exposure.
The announcement comes shortly after U.S. Customs and Border Control (CBP) detected Cs-137 in shipping containers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Houston, Savannah, and Miami, with agents finding evidence of the radioisotope in a single shipment of frozen bread shrimp. The discovery led the FDA to issue an alert for frozen shrimp supplied by Indonesia-based PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati to Walmart and sold under the “Great Value” brand name.
May 7, 2024 — With errant states falling in line with new striped bass catch curbs, East Coast fishery managers agreed last week to consider imposing still more limits on recreational fishing later this year to help the struggling fish recover.
The striped bass management board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates inshore fishing for migratory species, accepted revised plans May 1 from Maryland, Pennsylvania and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission for making required cutbacks in recreational and commercial harvests.
The board had rejected the three jurisdictions’ plans in March, putting them in jeopardy of having the federal government shut down all fishing for striped bass if the deficiencies weren’t corrected.
At issue for Maryland and the bi-state Potomac fisheries agency were their plans to delay action until 2026 if their 2024 commercial harvests exceeded the reduced level ordered by the Atlantic States commission.
The commission in January had ordered reductions in recreational and commercial catch amid concerns over an unexpected jump in recreational catch along the coast and surveys finding poor reproduction in the Chesapeake Bay, where most of the coastwide stock is spawned.
May 26, 2022 — Dr. Talia Young is an environmentalist who has spent most of her career studying fish.
She has also been a teacher for years, so when she created the program Fishadelphia as part of a fellowship, she made students part of the business.
Now she oversees the enterprise that connects communities: fisheries at the Jersey Shore and consumers in the Philly area.
January 6, 2022 — Based in Philadelphia, Fishadelphia is a pilot community seafood program that was awarded a Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) Grant in 2020. It was designed to connect low-income consumers in Northern Philadelphia with neighboring New Jersey harvesters. This project promotes improved business practices, increased market demand for U.S. commercial fish species, and keeping working waterfronts viable.
Grants are critical to the fishing industry. Traditional funding can be hard to obtain for smaller seafood programs, but that’s where the S-K program can help. These grants help bridge that gap and support projects that are outside of the mainstream lending arena.
Since 1980, the S-K Grants program has helped turn ideas into reality. In 2018, Dr. Talia Young started this project while a Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. Her goal was to connect the fishing communities with the eating communities in the city.
“This is a cool project and one that I’m happy to highlight because it supports community participation that contributes to the promotion of U.S. seafood. This provides fresh seafood to underserved communities, and increases the customer base for our working waterfronts, which aligns with the goals of the S-K grant program,” said Nicole MacDonald, Regional S-K Grant Manager at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office.
Fishadelphia in essence is a de facto retail fish market with students running the show. The whole idea is to make new connections by promoting, developing, and marketing local seafood to low-income people of color. The diverse team consists of middle school, high school, and college students, family, teachers, seafood harvesters, and marine biologists. The program is creative and paves the way for expansion. It serves as a model for other communities struggling to incorporate healthy seafood into their diets. It’s not surprising MacDonald thinks that this project is “cool”—because it is.
October 22, 2020 — “We need to teach Americans how to eat other kinds of fish,” says Talia Young, echoing a sentiment she heard from a guest at a local seafood conference. Young, a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and former Philadelphia public high school teacher, realized in 2018 that she might be able to connect her passion for both people and fish.
“I thought…what if we created a program that connected local harvesters to culturally diverse seafood eaters,” she says.
So Fishadelphia was born. It’s a community-based seafood program in Philadelphia, run by high-school students from Mastery Charter Thomas Campus in South Philadelphia and Simon Gratz Mastery Charter in North Philadelphia, after school. They offer locally harvested, affordable seafood to a diverse customer base through various “clubs,” that function similarly to community supported agriculture (CSA) programs — making the program Philly’s first “CSF,” or community supported fishery. The program is focused on accessibility — so customers who have kids who are students at Mastery Thomas or Simon Gratz, are eligible for food stamps or Medicaid, or are referred by another customer, can subscribe to the CSF at a discounted “community rate.”
October 6, 2020 — Pennsylvania has joined 11 other states to become the twelfth state to gain approval for its CARES Act spend plan.
The approval has it joining several other states, all of which had to go through a process with NOAA to gain access to funds that were released in May. The funds, which will be made in state-by-state allocations totaling USD 300 million (EUR 254 million), are intended to offset the negative economic impacts the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the U.S. seafood industry.
May 20, 2020 — Pennsylvania is one of the beneficiaries of the Commerce Department’s allocation of $300 million in CARES Act funding to support marine fisheries and states that have “direct and indirect” commerce with that industry.
Receiving approximately $3.3 million, Pennsylvania will be directed to use the funding for support of businesses within fishery industry, including “Tribes, commercial fishing businesses, charter/for-hire fishing businesses, qualified aquaculture operations, processors, and other” fishery businesses. Not included are “vessel repair businesses, restaurants, or seafood retailers.” New Jersey receives $11.3 million.
March 27, 2020 — Watermen have no restaurants that can buy their catches. Help for farmers who want to install runoff controls has been sharply curtailed. Streams throughout the region are missing their annual spring cleaning. And many students are losing their chance to experience the Chesapeake Bay firsthand.
The impact of the novel coronavirus, barely on the radar only a few months ago, is rippling through the Chesapeake Bay region, with impacts felt from Pennsylvania farm fields to Eastern Shore oyster grounds. While some impacts are minor, such as the postponement of meetings and cleanup events, others could become significant if the COVID-19 crisis lingers, potentially creating another setback for Bay pollution control initiatives.
While some point to slivers of positive news — air pollution is down — the near-shutdown of business activity is likely to slam state budgets in coming months, and possibly years, at a time when they had hoped to significantly increase spending on the Bay cleanup.