Saving Seafood

WASHINGTON: Seattle’s blessing of fishing fleet tradition continues for 98th year

April 13, 2026 — At the water’s edge, Pastor Mary Elise Scott led a group in prayer for a safe and bountiful fishing season.

Guide and protect David Christensen, his crew, and all who fish the North Pacific waters,” Scott said Sunday afternoon at Fishermen’s Terminal in Seattle.

Christensen then raised a handmade religious pennant on his boat, Gjøa, before a crowd of 75 people.

It’s the 98th year that Scott’s house of worship, Ballard First Lutheran Church, has blessed the North Pacific fishing fleet, which has relied on the marina since its opening in 1914.

Read the full article at The Olympian

Trident Seafoods sues city of Tacoma for alleged improper fire containment that destroyed fishing vessel

April 13, 2026 — Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based Trident Seafoods filed a lawsuit against the city of Tacoma on 8 April, accusing the city’s fire department of “making a critical tactical decision” that destroyed a Trident commercial fishing vessel in 2023.

According to King5, the lawsuit seeks damages of at least USD 100 million (EUR 85 million). 

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

USDA awards nearly USD 14 million in catfish, pollock, and salmon contracts

December 15, 2025 —  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded USD 13,694,519 (EUR 11,666,316) in contracts for catfish, pollock, and salmon products for use in federal domestic food programs.

Sitka, Alaska, U.S.A.-based Silver Bay Seafoods was the biggest winner of the announcement, securing roughly half of the funding by value. The company was awarded USD 7,077,272 (EUR 6,028,959) to provide more than 88,000 cases of canned pink salmon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Channel Fish, Trident Seafoods win latest USDA contracts for pollock, haddock

June 9, 2025 — U.S. seafood suppliers Trident Seafoods and Channel Fish Processing have won new contracts for fish products from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) worth a total of nearly USD 2 million (EUR 1.8 million).

Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based Trident Seafoods was awarded USD 530,556 (EUR 465,627) to supply 228,000 lbs of frozen pollock fish sticks and fillets, while Braintree, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Channel Fish Processing was awarded USD 1.1 million (EUR 952,791) to supply 456,000 lbs of frozen pollock fish sticks and fillets.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Alaskan seafood nabs higher profile at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena

October 18, 2023 — The Bristol Bay Native Corporation and the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association are getting a higher profile for Alaskan seafood at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Timed with the Seattle Kraken’s first home game of the season on 17 October – a National Hockey League franchise that plays at the arena – BBNC’s Bristol Bay Wild Market is opening in a new, more prominent location in the arena.

Read the full article SeafoodSource

Lawsuit alleges iconic Pike Place Fish Market guilty of trademark infringement

September 12, 2023 — Pike Place Fish Market (PPFM), the iconic fresh seafood market inside Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., is facing a trademark infringement lawsuit.

The Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA), which manages the market, claims PPFM it is illicitly using its name to advertise products nationwide without PDA’s permission.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Collaboration between pollock industry and Seattle sports franchises boosts seafood awareness

August 18, 2023 — At entertainment and sports venues across the United States, where fans often enjoy pizza, hot dogs, nachos, and other stadium cuisine staples, seafood is typically absent from arena menus.

A newly minted partnership is on a mission to change that, however, and has picked a seafood-loving city to launch its innovative campaign: Seattle, Washington.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Did salmon actually use the Skagit River before the Seattle dams were built?

December 20, 2022 — Beneath the city of Seattle’s Gorge Dam an unnatural silence reigns. This stretch of the Skagit River, known as the bypass reach, is a sacred gateway to the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe’s Valley of the Spirits. But now it’s completely dry, as the city diverts the river into a three-mile-long tunnel through a mountain to a power-generating facility below. Gorge Dam is the lowermost of the three large dams in the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project; the other two, Diablo and Ross, lie upstream. Together, they form the Skagit hydroelectric project and provide 20% of the energy Seattle City Light, the city’s public utility, produced in 2021.

The utility is applying for a new license to operate the dams which, if granted, could remain in effect for the next 50 years. But the process has come up against a seemingly simple question with huge implications: Did salmon, steelhead and trout ever actually use the river above these dams? If they did, the city may be required to provide access to the fish habitat above.

Seattle City Light, which has had a monopoly on energy in the city since 1951, has argued that the fish never accessed the stretches of the river where its dams and reservoirs now stand, at least not in significant numbers, and that because of this, the utility should not be required to take on the major infrastructure work of adding fish passage. However, a chorus of people, from federal agencies to tribal nations and their biologists, have offered up formidable evidence to the contrary, citing historical records, tribal histories and research, federal agency findings — even newspaper stories from the time the dams were being constructed in the early 1920s — which suggest fish did ascend the river, and that today they may need access to that habitat in order to survive.

If the dams were taken down or fish passage installed, Indigenous nations could see fish return to traditional fishing grounds and endangered species that rely on the river could be restored.

Read the full article at High Country News

Court ruling on endangered killer whales could force a rewrite of federal fisheries policy

August 19, 2022 — A federal judge in Seattle has ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated a key provision of the Endangered Species Act in 2019 when it published research on the harvest of king salmon in Southeast Alaska that failed to address its impact on a small population of killer whales in Puget Sound.

In a summary judgment granted to the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy, U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Jones on Aug. 8 ordered that an “appropriate remedy” be found, that — while it could limit commercial trolling for chinook in Southeast — will more likely result in a rewrite of the biological opinion that led to the problem.

“I think we’ve won the recognition that this fishery was actually causing harm to threatened and endangered species, and for all intents and purposes was illegal,” said Kurt Beardslee, director of special projects for the conservancy.

The Wild Fish Conservancy filed suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in March of 2020, arguing that the government failed to adequately address the impact of Alaskan king salmon harvests on southern resident killer whales, whose population has dropped to critically low levels.

The Wild Fish Conservancy says 97% of king salmon harvested by Southeast Alaska trollers don’t originate in Alaska, depriving southern resident killer whales of their primary food source.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game puts the share of out-of-state chinook in the Alaska harvest much lower — 30-80%, depending on the year.

Matt Donohoe, president of the Alaska Trollers Association, says few if any of those are from Puget Sound, where southern resident killer whales spend several months each year.

Read the full article KTOO