Saving Seafood

MAINE: Gratitude for our sea farmers

August 22, 2026 — Cultivating food for human consumption is among the most noble and important jobs in society. Harnessing the resources gifted to us by nature and turning them into delicious meals for our neighbors and visitors is a challenging task, and farmers—of both the land and sea—deserve our gratitude.

Our pristine waters produce the most exquisite seafood on the planet. The flavors of our farmed oysters, mussels, and salmon are desired by the finest chefs in America and envied by seafood producers all over the world. Maine’s sea farmers are the ones who make it possible for us to be nourished by this local, sustainable, and delicious food.

The Maine Farmed Seafood Coalition consists of over 50 businesses and industry support groups—including seafood farmers and dealers, banks, educational institutions, and nonprofits. Our goal is to tell the authentic stories of sea farmers and educate the public about the opportunities aquaculture presents for our economy, communities, and ecosystems.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

ALASKA: Fish fights take center stage in Alaska Senate race

August 20, 2026 — The plight of the state’s fisheries, some of the most productive in the world, has become a flashpoint in Alaska’s Senate race and arisen as a potential weakness for two-term incumbent Dan Sullivan.

Sullivan faces a tough reelection bid against former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who has centered her campaign around “Fish, Family, Freedom.” She’s trying to harness anger at out-of-state commercial fishing to win her way back to Congress.

Alaska hosts some of the largest commercial pollock fisheries in the world as well as major salmon populations — buttressing a seafood industry that supports more than 15,000 Alaskan jobs with around $5 billion in value. Many Alaska Natives harvest fish from the state’s mighty rivers and rely on the catch during winter.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Trawling and bycatch dominate political messaging in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

August 17, 2026 — Trawling ships that over the years have incidentally scooped up and wasted millions of pounds of salmon and other fish have burst onto the forefront of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

Multiple Outside political advocacy groups with little public information about their donors are targeting candidates over their approach to limiting bycatch in the pollock industry, which critics blame for contributing to historic declines in Alaska salmon, halibut and crab fisheries.

Alaska fishermen have appeared in ads discussing the bycatch records of the major candidates, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and challenger Mary Peltola, a Democratic former U.S. representative.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Deep sea mining in the Gulf of Alaska

August 13, 2026 — With China reportedly producing around 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth elements, and far ahead in processing technology, the U.S. and other countries are searching for new ways to meet demand, and deep sea mining on seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska is on the list of proposals. The Japanese press reported in July that experimental deep sea mining had successfully extracted rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium—all vital for fighter jet and missile guidance systems—from 6,000 feet below the surface.

In April of 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14285 “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is evaluating whether to advance a competitive lease sale for minerals on the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf. “We don’t know what impact deep sea mining could have on fisheries, but there is cause for concern,” says retired University of Alaska marine professor Rick Steiner, who now runs a consulting company called Oasis Earth.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Kelp’s crisis is the fleet’s crisis

August 11, 2026 — Kelp forests in the United States are under threat and are facing the same stresses as the commercial fisheries that work around them. The Forest of the Sea by David Helvarg, published in May, tells the story of kelp, the importance of healthy kelp forests, and the challenges these habitats face. While this book is not about commercial fishing, it does include fishermen, and its insights are vital to those who make a living harvesting wild fish from a rapidly changing sea.

Kelp forests have evolved as the anchor habitat for nearshore ecosystems in the cold waters of temperate climes across the globe. Helvarg dives into the ecological and economic importance of kelp forests, and how they’re under threat as waters warm and other environmental stressors diminish their footprint, often drastically so.

As a commercial fisherman on the West Coast and as a journalist covering fisheries and oceans for more than 15 years, the health of fisheries and the health of kelp forests have mirrored each other from my vantage point. Since the Blob, the extreme marine heatwave that hit the West Coast from 2014-2016, whale entanglements ravaged the California Dungeness crab fishery while 90 percent of the Northern California kelp forests disappeared. This isn’t a situation where one affects the other, but parallel plot lines in the same story.

Helvarg, a veteran journalist who also serves as the executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean advocacy NGO, uses Fort Bragg, Calif., as an example of just this. The shoreline of the small city nearly 200 miles north of San Francisco has historically been dominated by thick kelp forests teeming with life. It has also been an important commercial fishing port for Dungeness crab, salmon, and groundfish.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaskan fishing management on the hook in Ninth Circuit

August 11, 2026 — An ocean conservation group asked a Ninth Circuit panel on Monday to make the National Fisheries Management Service take another look at the impact of fishing on essential fish habitat offshore of Alaska.

“All the court needs to decide is a straightforward legal question: Can the Fisheries Service meet its obligation to minimize all adverse effects on all designated essential fish habitat by using only two tests to identify those adverse effects?” posited Katherine Glover, Earthjustice attorney representing Oceana.

Oceana, an advocacy organization focused on ocean conservation, sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2024. It accused the service of using the wrong criteria when looking at the effects of fishing on essential fish habitat offshore of Alaska.

Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the service is required to identify and protect “essential fish habitat” necessary to sustain healthy fish populations.  As part of that, the service is obligated to minimize adverse impacts on essential fish habitats caused by fishing.

The service approved five amendments to management plans for federally managed groundfish, crab and salmon fisheries in the waters near Alaska, and Oceana accused the service of relying on only two flawed tests to make its decision. One is the core essential fish habitat test and the other is the minimum stock size threshold test.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Section 301 tariffs leave US seafood importers with few avenues to avoid rising costs

August 10, 2026 — The latest round of tariffs implemented by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) targeted several countries that heavily produce salmon and shrimp with duty rates between 10 percent and 12.5 percent, leaving U.S. seafood importers with few options for relief from rising costs.

The 60 global economies hit with Section 301 tariffs include top salmon-producing countries such as Norway, Chile, and the U.K., as well as shrimp-producing nations like Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Inside the overlooked world of Bristol Bay’s salmon tenders

August 5, 2026 — When Bristol Bay’s salmon run reaches its peak, the spotlight usually falls on the fishermen hauling sockeye over the rails. But just offshore, another fleet is working around the clock to keep the fishery moving.

Tender boats shuttle thousands of pounds of salmon from fishermen to processors, fuel skiffs, deliver groceries and gear, and often serve as floating support vessels during one of the busiest commercial fisheries in the U.S. Without them, many fishermen simply couldn’t keep fishing.

For Washington native Evan Blankenship, tendering has become an essential part of his livelihood.

“I stumbled into fishing and Alaska because of my high school history teacher,” Blankenship shared. “She told stories about working in a remote Alaskan cannery in the 1990s. It sounded like such a wildly different experience from where I grew up.”

In 2006, at age 19, Blankenship headed north to Naknek for his first summer working in a cannery. One season turned into many. He eventually moved from processing to tendering in Bristol Bay, then into salmon seining in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound before buying his first seine boat in Kodiak in 2015.

Today, his operation splits the summer between Bristol Bay tendering and Kodiak salmon seining, a combination that provides both stability and opportunity.

Blankenship began combining tendering and seining in 2018 after several unpredictable years in Kodiak’s salmon fishery.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Bay commercial salmon fishery returns after five-year hiatus

August 4, 2026 — Commercial salmon fishing returned to Alaska’s Kuskokwim Bay this summer for the first time in five years, offering dozens of local fishermen a chance to earn income despite persistent logistical and financial challenges.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the fishery reopened in early July, with about 70 permit holders targeting primarily sockeye salmon. Larry Strunk, a founding member of the Independent Fishermen of Quinhagak Cooperative, told KYUK that some fishermen had already earned more than $10,000 during the season with the potential for individual earnings to reach $15,000.

The fishery, however, was short-lived. Strunk told KYUK that the cooperative wrapped up fishing around July 28 after declining sockeye catches and rising operating costs made it difficult to continue.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Bay commercial salmon fishery opens after 5-year hiatus

July 30, 2026 — Dozens of ocean-going skiffs have been busy unfurling gill nets along the shores of Kuskokwim Bay. But the catches haven’t been headed to fish camps. Instead, the salmon are quickly bled, put on ice, and offloaded onto vessels bobbing in the waters in front of Quinhagak and Goodnews Bay.

If the fishery is successful, an at-sea processor with hundreds of thousands of pounds of frozen, mostly sockeye, salmon will return to Washington state to bring the catch to market.

According to Larry Strunk, a founding member of the Independent Fishermen of Quinhagak Cooperative, local permit holders could earn upwards of $15,000 each by fishing the openers.

“We have some fishermen that have already been paid over $10,000 this month,” Strunk said.

But as of July 28, Strunk said that diminishing sockeye numbers and logistical issues have spelled the end of this year’s fishery, just three weeks after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game opened it.

Read the full article at KYUK