Saving Seafood

WASHINGTON: Fewer sockeye are returning to the Upper Columbia. Washington closed its fishery to protect the salmon

July 10, 2026 – It’s a tough year for sockeye salmon in the Upper Columbia River. So few sockeye are returning to their spawning grounds that Washington isn’t allowing sockeye fishing from Priest Rapids Dam to Chief Joseph Dam. The season was supposed to open July 1.

It’s hard to predict just how many salmon will return in any given year, but fishery managers said they were shocked with how few sockeye reached Bonneville Dam.

They expected around 275,000 sockeye. Now, the forecast looks like fewer than 80,000 fish will return. That’s about 71% fewer sockeye.

These fish that migrate in the summer naturally have booms and busts. Recent low returns happened in 2011, 2018, 2019 and 2021. Some of the highest counts came in 2022 and 2024.

However, this few sockeye is troubling, said Chad Jackson, a fish biologist in north central Washington for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Read the full article at NWPB 

CALIFORNIA: Proposed Marine Protected Area would restrict fishing near Morro Bay

July 9, 2026 — A Marine Protected Area (MPA) petition filed by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians (SYBCI) includes the area from Morro Rock to the dog beach.

The MPA was one of 20 received by the California Fish and Game Commission in 2023. There were also 72 proposed regulatory changes.

“The original petition proposed the allowance of recreational take of finfish and invertebrates except mussels and scallops,” said Claire Wagonner, California Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Region Habitat Conservation Program Manager. “So it would’ve still continued to allow some recreational take.”

Waggoner said that changed in April when the tribe requested to amend the petition, allowing only tribal fishing for the SYBCI.

“It’s our livelihood,” said Lori French, a Morro Bay fisherman’s wife. “It’s his identity. It’s not like you just go to work and shut the job off.”

Read the full article at KSBY

OREGON: Oregon lawmakers push to restore salmon hatchery funding

July 10, 2026 — A bipartisan group of Oregon coastal lawmakers is urging the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to reverse its decision to cut funding for a salmon hatchery program they say is critical to the state’s commercial and recreational fisheries.

BPA announced in June that it plans to end its more than $2 million in annual funding for the Select Area Fisheries Enhancement (SAFE) program. Which is managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, according to reporting by OPB. The funding has covered more than one-third of the program’s operating costs since 1993.

BPA is a federal nonprofit agency under the U.S. Department of Energy that also markets wholesale electricity generated by 31 federal dams and one nuclear plant in the Pacific Northwest.

According to OPB, BPA said it is ending its support because the program has not made sufficient progress toward improving populations of salmon protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

El Niño is here, and it’s already scrambling fisheries throughout the Pacific

July 8, 2026 — We’re not even one month into “super” El Niño, the natural Pacific weather pattern characterized by warmer than average sea surface temperatures, and fisheries around the world are already getting scrambled.

In Peru, government officials have effectively canceled the fishing season for anchovies, one of the country’s most important exports and a leading source of fish oil and animal feed globally. The Indian government is preparing for a season of smaller, less plentiful Indian mackerel. Meanwhile, in Southern California, recreational and commercial fishers have reported some of the most successful months of tuna fishing they’ve ever seen.

Read the full article at Grist

New tagging study tracks Dungeness crab movement in Puget Sound

July 8, 2026 — State and tribal fishery managers in Washington are using a floy-tag study to track how Dungeness crab move through parts of Puget Sound, with the goal of improving how catch quotas and fishing seasons are set in areas where crab populations have struggled.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), working with the Suquamish and Jamestown tribes, has tagged and released 885 legal-size male Dungeness crab since September 2025 across Marine Area 9 (Admiralty Inlet), Marine Area 10 (Seattle and Bremerton area) and the portion of Marine Area 12 (Hood Canal) north of Ayock Point.

In late September 2025, WDFW and the Suquamish Tribe tagged and released 555 crab across six sites in Marine Area 10, ranging from Alki Point in West Seattle north to Apple Cove Point near Kingston. As of June 25, 2026, 84 of those crab had been recaptured in recreational, state, and tribal commercial fisheries.

On June 9, 2026, WDFW and the Jamestown Tribe tagged and released another 330 crab in Marine Areas 9 and 12. Two had been recaptured as of June 25.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA accepting feedback on increasing Gulf red grouper quotas

July 8, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries has opened a public comment period on Amendment 62, a multi-year plan that would increase red grouper catch limits for the Gulf of Mexico by 53 percent in the first year.

At the same time, the Gulf Council is pushing forward with a follow-up plan that would establish a three-year pilot program that would set aside some of the commercial catch for the Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: After years of closure, California salmon fishing set to reopen this spring — with tight limits

March 18, 2026 — For the first time in four years, salmon fishing seasons will open in California for both commercial and recreational use this spring.

That could be great news for local anglers and for professional fishers in Santa Cruz County, many of whom previously relied on the lucrative season for a significant portion of their annual income. But that doesn’t mean California salmon will come flooding back to markets, one local fish distributor said.

The sport fishing season will open first, on April 11 in ocean waters south of Pigeon Point, about 30 miles north of Santa Cruz. The commercial season, which has been closed in the state since 2023 due to low stock numbers, is set to open in California in mid-May, with a final date and regulations to be set in mid-April. The recreational fishery had only limited openings in 2025 following closures in 2023 and 2024 for the same reason.

Over the past year, salmon populations in the area have rebounded, with population sizes more than double last year’s estimates, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a media release on Friday.

Read the full article at Lookout Santa Cruz

NOAA Recreational Fisheries Year In Review

December 15, 2021 — The United States has the largest and most diverse recreational fisheries in the world. Each year, millions of saltwater anglers contribute tens of billions of dollars to the American economy while supporting nearly 500,000 jobs. Saltwater recreational fishing is an economic powerhouse, and engaging with anglers remains a top priority for NOAA Fisheries. We work with fishermen, states, and many other partners to safeguard and promote public access to healthy and sustainable saltwater fish stocks.

While 2021 continued to challenge all of us in unexpected ways, we remained committed to achieving and promoting access to sustainable recreational fisheries.

To remain engaged with anglers and on the issues important to you, our team ramped up virtual engagement in 2021. We co-hosted a series of virtual roundtable discussions with NOAA Fisheries regional staff to gather input for the upcoming 2022 Recreational Summit and stay abreast of important local issues. We released our first ever video series featuring five informative and educational recreational fisheries videos from around the country.

We continued our collaboration with numerous private and public sector entities (e.g., Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation and the Department of Interior). We celebrated National Fishing and Boating Week with exciting new content helping to reach a record number of prospective anglers. We also strengthened our partnership with Bonnier Corporation, the nation’s leading publisher of fishing and outdoor magazines, by co-hosting the 2021 national recreational fishing photo contest.

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

 

Recreational Fishery Reform in the Mid-Atlantic: Sidestepping Magnuson-Stevens?

September 3, 2021 — Since March 2019, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council), in conjunction with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), has been working on what they call the “Recreational Reform Initiative,” (Initiative) a project that could completely change the way recreational fisheries are managed in the mid-Atlantic region.

The Council describes the Initiative this way:

The Recreational Reform Initiative considers improvements to management of the recreational fisheries for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. This joint initiative…will address a range of recreational management issues through a joint framework/addendum and a joint amendment.The framework/addendum will further develop and consider the following topics and management issues:

  • better incorporating [Marine Recreational Information Program] uncertainty into the management process;
  • guidelines for maintaining status quo recreational management measures (i.e., bag, size, and season limits) from one year to the next;
  • a process for setting multi-year recreational management measures;
  • changes to the timing of the recommendation for federal waters recreational management measures; and
  • a proposal put forward by six recreational organizations called a harvest control rule.

The amendment will consider options for managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes (referred to as sector separation) and will also consider options related to recreational catch accounting such as private angler reporting and enhanced vessel trip report requirements for for-hire vessels.

Goal/Vision:

  • Stability in the recreational management measures (bag, size, season)
  • Flexibility in the management process
  • Accessibility aligned with availability/stock status

Reading that description, one of the things that sticks out is that, despite all of the words, there’s not a single mention of maintaining healthy and abundant fish stocks.

That could signal a problem.

Recreational fishery management isn’t perfect, and could benefit from new approaches that account for management uncertainty, and perhaps align management changes with the biennial stock assessment updates that are produced for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. Still, there is one aspect of the Initiative that might be taking recreational fishery management in the wrong direction.

That is the “proposal put forward by six recreational organizations called a harvest control rule” (Control Rule) which supposedly promotes the Initiative’s Goal/Vision of stability, flexibility, and accessibility in recreational fishery management.

If that Goal/Vision reminds you of the debate over the so-called “Modern Fish Act” a few years ago, that’s not a coincidence. The organizations promoting the Control Rule are the same ones that promoted the Modern Fish Act, and are continuing to disrupt red snapper management in the Gulf of Mexico; they are now bringing the same arguments that they have made in the Gulf to the mid-Atlantic region.

They haven’t concealed their intent to undermine the current federal fishery management system, and its use of science-based annual catch limits and accountability measures, in favor of the sort of less structured, seat-of-the-pants management measures that are often used by state agencies, and which have so often failed when employed by the ASMFC.

Read the full story at the Marine Fish Conservation Network

 

New Recreational Management Effort Raises More Questions than Answers

September 3, 2021 — For longer than a year, we’ve been keeping an eye on the Recreational Reform Initiative (RRI), a comprehensive joint effort by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission) to improve the management of four key recreational fisheries—black sea bass, fluke, scup, and bluefish. The process has been complex, evolving, and largely devoid of public input. However, now that concrete alternatives for the first piece of the RRI, the Recreational Harvest Control Rule (HCR) Framework/Addendum, are out in the public sphere, its time share our thoughts and concerns—and get you, the public, up to speed with what’s going on.

Quick Background on Recreational Reform

The RRI grew out of Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) growing pains, specifically with regard to black sea bass. After recalibrated MRIP estimates were approved for management use in 2017, our understanding of many stocks fundamentally changed. MRIP told us that because recreational effort, catch, and landings were substantially higher than previously understood, there must have been more fish in the ocean. This resulted in a phenomenon known as “chasing the recreational harvest limit (RHL),” where managers were constantly trying to constrain recreational catches.

Earlier this year, the Council and Commission prioritized the HCR as a possible alternative and solution to the current system of managing the recreational sector. An HCR can provide relief by relying on predetermined measures (bag size, season length, and size limit) for certain scenarios like stock status and trend. Additionally, HCRs can remove the political pressures surrounding recreational management measures—when implemented and developed effectively. Leading up to the joint Council/Commission meeting in August, Council and Commission staff met several times to develop various alternatives. Following these meetings, the slate of options on the table was comprehensive and addressed many—but not all—of ASGA’s initial concerns.

Throughout this whole process, our primary concern was that the HCR appeared to offer a way for recreational fisheries to sidestep the Magnuson-Stevens Act requirement of Annual Catch Limits (ACL)—bringing back unpleasant memories from the Modern Fish Act debate on Capitol Hill in 2017-2018. If you’re wondering why that’s a concern, consider that the same groups who initially proposed the HCR were also behind the Modern Fish Act. For months, staff members grappled with developing HCR alternatives without fully sorting out how this system will adhere to ACLs. We view this as a major issue for two reasons. One, ACLs work; they have been an integral reason for the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s success in rebuilding overfished stocks. Second, catch limits are a legal requirement; operating without them or ignoring them can open NOAA Fisheries to legal liability. Details regarding how managers plan to integrate ACLs—and accountability measures—into an HCR system remains to be seen.

Another glaring issue with the HCR discussions thus far concerns the public’s lack of awareness or involvement and the rushed effort to implement a brand-new management strategy as soon as next year. Follow along for a deeper dive into the HCR alternatives, how the most recent management discussions went, and what’s next.

Read the full story at the American Saltwater Guides Association