Saving Seafood

The Tide has Turned: Atlantic Mackerel Shows Signs of Improvement

July 1, 2026 — Since 2017, NOAA Fisheries and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council have been trying to help the Atlantic mackerel population rebuild. The population has been struggling, but a recent stock assessment shows that the population is showing signs of improvement.

We manage Atlantic mackerel under the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan. In 2017, a benchmark stock assessment found that the mackerel population was dangerously low and overfishing was occurring. As a result, in 2019 we developed and implemented a 5-year rebuilding plan to help the mackerel population recover. That rebuilding plan was extended to 10 years after a 2021 management track assessment indicated the stock could not rebuild within the initial 5-year window. A 2023 management track assessment revealed the stock was no longer experiencing overfishing, but the mackerel population was still struggling to rebound. As a result, commercial possession limits and fishery specifications were reduced further.

In September 2025, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center completed another management track assessment for mackerel using updated data through 2024. That assessment indicated the mackerel population is no longer low, and overfishing is still not occurring. Mackerel abundance from the 2024 spring bottom trawl survey was also near a record high. In 2024 egg production in U.S. waters was the highest since the 1980s, and estimated recruitment was the highest it’s been since 1983. While the mackerel population is showing signs of improvement, there is a substantial amount of uncertainty. Mackerel assessments have tended to overestimate terminal year recruitment in the past, and the abundance of older, larger fish in the mackerel population is low. However, the 2025 assessment results represent an improvement from the last few assessments.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

US Fish and Wildlife Service reclassifies squid and other cephalopods as shellfish

June 30, 2026 —  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has finalized a rule reclassifying cephalopods as shellfish, a move advocates claim will reduce red tape and unnecessary fees around squid harvesting.

“On behalf of Lund’s Fisheries, we would like to thank the Trump administration for a solution to a burdensome requirement that will save us time, money and administrative difficulties,” Wayne Reichle, president of Cape May, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based squid harvester Lund’s Fisheries, said in a release. “This is a perfect example of numerous federal agencies working in cooperation with the U.S. commercial fishing industry to make our seafood competitive on a global scale and creating thriving business here at home.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Advocacy Helps Small Fishing Businesses Secure a Win from Changes to Squid Rules

June 29, 2026 — The following was released by the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy:

The U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy (Advocacy) applauds the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) final rule to amend the definition of “shellfish” to include cephalopods, providing small fishing businesses simplicity and clarity.

Previous FWS regulations defined shellfish as “an aquatic invertebrate having a shell.” However, cephalopods, including squid, cuttlefish, and octopus, have internal shells, reduced shells, or no shells at all. This has caused confusion over whether cephalopods qualify as shellfish for purposes of federal import/export, declaration, inspection, and enforcement regulations. As a result, small fishing businesses have lost business opportunities and been subject to unnecessary reporting fees.

“I am encouraged to see that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took into account the concerns of our small fishing businesses by finalizing this rule,” said Everett M. Woodel, Jr., Acting Chief Counsel for Advocacy. “I am hopeful that the updated definition will provide small fishing businesses with the much-needed clarity they need to succeed.”

Advocacy worked with many fishing businesses to help bring attention to the real-world impacts of the confusion caused by the old definition of “shellfish.” One of those businesses, Lund’s Fisheries, explained how the updated FWS definition will help their business.

“On behalf of Lund’s Fisheries, we would like to thank the Trump administration for a solution to a burdensome requirement that will save us time, money and administrative difficulties,” said Wayne Reichle, President of Lund’s Fisheries Inc. in Cape May, New Jersey. “This is a perfect example of numerous federal agencies working in cooperation with the U.S. commercial fishing industry to make our seafood competitive on a global scale and creating thriving business here at home.”

Advocacy submitted a comment letter in support of the FWS’s broadening of the definition of “shellfish” to include cephalopods on April 6, 2026. Advocacy estimates that fixing this regulatory issue could save impacted small businesses at least $2.8 million. The final rule will take effect on July 23, 2026.

The definition of squid is one of the many fishing-related regulations Advocacy has heard about from U.S. small businesses. In March, Advocacy added onboard observer requirements and the designation of marine sanctuaries and national monuments to its “Small Businesses’ Most Wanted Reform” list. In a related development, SBA and Advocacy applauded President Donald J. Trump on June 12 for restoring nearly half a million square miles of U.S. commercial fishing access in three Pacific marine national monuments.

PRESS RELEASE

SBA No. 26-19 ADV

FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES, CONTACT:

Samantha Aschieris, Director of Communications

EMAIL:

samantha.aschieris@sba.gov

Federal rule expands ‘shellfish’ definition to include squid, octopus

June 26, 2026 — A longstanding federal definition of “shellfish” is changing to better reflect modern biology and simplify seafood trade regulations.

According to Newsweek, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) finalized a rule on June 23 that removes the requirement that shellfish have an external shell. The updated definition takes effect on July 23, 2026

Under the revised rule, shellfish now includes aquatic invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca, bringing squid, octopus, cuttlefish and other cephalopods under the same regulatory definition as oysters and clams. Crustaceans such as lobster, shrimp and crab remain included.

The previous definition described shellfish as “any species of mollusk having a shell,” language that regulators said no longer matched current biological classifications. Because many cephalopods have internal, reduced or no external shells, the old definition created uncertainty in how these species were handled at U.S. ports of entry.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Sun Coast Calamari buys new vessels, makes key hire in expansion push

March 12, 2026 — Oxnard, California, U.S.A.-based Sun Coast Calamari has purchased two new vessels and appointed a new general manager in a bid to expand its position within the California squid fishery.

In a release, the company announced the Reichle family – which owns both Sun Coast Calamari and Lund’s Fishers – has acquired the F/V Anduril and the F/V Taylor Brooks, which will both participate in the squid fishery year-round. The Anduril, a 58-foot purse seine vessel, was built in 1991; the Taylor Brooks is a 68-foot purse seiner built in 1983.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Del Mar Seafoods expanding operations with new facility

July 15, 2025 — Watsonville, California, U.S.A.-based Del Mar Seafoods has expanded its operations with the lease of a new facility.

Founded in 1988, Del Mar Seafoods is a vertically integrated seafood producer and processor in California that produces and supplies over 30 million pounds of squid, anchovies, and other wild-caught species per year. The company was a part of collaboration to obtain Marine Stewardship Council certification for the California squid fishery, which was ultimately granted in 2023.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

China Dominates ‘Dark’ Network Behind Global Fishing Crisis

June 4, 2025 — A new report exposes the sophisticated networks propping up Chinese squid fleets accused of illegal fishing off South America.

These activities—often carried out with Automatic Identification System (AIS) trackers turned off, or “dark”—are undercutting local fishers who depend on regional marine resources for their livelihoods, according to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit C4ADS.

Illegal, Unreported And Unregulated

The rising demand for seafood and dwindling local stocks have pushed fishing fleets farther from home. The vessels now operate in international waters for months—even years—at a time, virtually unmonitored, increasing the risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and labor abuses.

China and Taiwan account for about 60 percent of distant-water fishing, and Chinese vessels in particular have faced growing scrutiny for allegedly operating illegally within South American exclusive economic zones, prompting rising grassroots pressure to tighten enforcement and close regulatory loopholes.

What To Know

The abundant stocks of jumbo flying squid and Argentine shortfin squid have attracted distant-water fishing fleets to the coasts of South America.

A report released Tuesday by the C4Dfound that 69 percent of squid jiggers operating off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts share ownership with ships allegedly involved in illicit activities, or vessels of concern.

While these operations are theoretically under the oversight of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO), enforcement is often spotty. The situation is even more tenuous on the Atlantic coast, which lacks a comparable fisheries management framework.

Read the full article at Newsweek

How Chinese Fishing Vessels Dominate Domestic Waters Across the Globe

August 2, 2024 — On March 14, 2016, in the squid grounds off the coast of Patagonia, a rusty Chinese vessel named the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was fishing illegally, several miles inside Argentine waters. Spotted by an Argentine coast-guard patrol and ordered over the radio to halt, the specially-designed squid-fishing ship, known as a “jigger,” fled the scene. The Argentinians gave chase and fired warning shots. The Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 then tried to ram the coast-guard cutter, prompting it to open fire directly on the jigger, which soon sank.

Although the violent encounter at sea that day was unusual, the incursion into Argentine waters by a Chinese squid jigger was not. Owned by a state-run behemoth called the China National Fisheries Company, or CNFC, the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was one of several hundred Chinese jiggers that makes annual visits to the high-seas portion of the fishing grounds that lie beyond Argentina’s territory; many of these jiggers then turn off their locational transponders and cross secretly into Argentine waters. Since 2010, the Argentine navy has chased at least 11 Chinese squid vessels out of Argentine waters for suspected illegal fishing, according to the government.

In 2017, a year after the illegal incursion and sinking of the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10, Argentina’s Federal Fishing Council issued a little-noticed announcement: it was granting fishing licenses to two foreign vessels that would allow them to operate within Argentine waters. Both would sail under the Argentine flag through a local front company, but their true “beneficial” owner was the CNFC. (The CNFC did not respond to requests for comment.)

The move by local authorities may have been a contradiction, but it is an increasingly common one in Argentina—and elsewhere around the world. Over the past three decades, China has gained supremacy over global fishing by dominating the high seas with more than 6,000 distant-water ships, a fleet that is more than triple the size of the next largest national fleet. When it came to targeting other countries’ waters, Chinese fishing ships typically sat “on the outside,” parking in international waters along sea borders, then running incursions across the line into domestic waters. But in recent years, from South America to Africa to the far Pacific, China has increasingly taken a “softer” approach, gaining control from the inside by paying to “flag-in” their ships so they can fish in domestic waters. Subtler than simply entering foreign coastal areas to fish illegally, the tactic is less likely to result in political clashes, bad press, or sunken vessels.

Read the full story at TIME

Squid Fishing on the High Seas Has Exploded Since 2017

March 13, 2023 — Global squid fishing increased by 68% between 2017 and 2020, according to our international analysis, prompting concerns that much of the international fishing fleet is sidestepping necessary conservation and management.

Our study, carried out with colleagues in Australia, Japan, the United States, Chile and Canada, and published today in Science Advances, reveals that almost all of the increase in squid fishing has occurred in unregulated areas, with 86% of squid fishing now occurring in places with little or no scrutiny of catch sizes.

Unregulated fishing poses a significant challenge to fishery sustainability and raises substantial equity concerns. While attention has tended to focus on illegal fishing, the growth in legal but unregulated fishing may pose an even bigger threat, particularly to species such as squid, whose fisheries can cover entire oceans.

To estimate the scale of global squid fishing, we analysed satellite imagery and vessel tracking data to see how many vessels are fishing for squid, and where and how often they operate.

Squid fishing vessels are typically outfitted with powerful lamps to attract squid to the surface. These lamps are so powerful that they are visible from space. This means we can use satellite data to spot these lights at night, along with data from the ships’ Automatic Identification System (AIS), which allows authorities to monitor the location and course of registered vessels.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

New study zeros in on market squid increase off Oregon

January 31, 2022 — New research has found market squid populations increased fivefold off the Oregon and Washington state coasts in recent years, a population boom and an expansion north tied to several years of extremely warm ocean temperatures.

It is a glimpse of the possible future.

Mary Hunsicker, the co-author of the study and a research ecologist with NOAA Fisheries, said it is “what we might expect to see in Oregon waters with continued, long-term warming of ocean temperatures and more extreme warming events due to climate change.”

Hunsicker and her fellow researchers used survey data that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collects every year from designated spots off the West Coast. The surveys are independent from fisheries and do not target squid, but squid kept showing up.

While researchers saw major increases in the squid population in the north, they did not see the same level of increase in California, the squid’s more traditional home. Market squid is a cornerstone of California’s commercial fishing industry, both in value and in pounds landed.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian