Saving Seafood

PFMC Agenda Updates Moving to Council Website Notifications

August 24, 2026 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council is updating how it shares real-time agenda changes during Council meetings. PFMC will be closing its X/Twitter accounts, @PacificCouncil and @PFMCagenda. To continue providing timely meeting updates, PFMC has created a new notification tool on the Council website.

This tool will be used during Council meetings to share agenda timing changes and other meeting-day updates.
Meeting participants and members of the public should visit the current Council meeting page on the PFMC website during Council meetings for the most up-to-date agenda information.

West Coast groundfish fishery completes historic comeback

March 12, 2026 — After decades of restrictions that idled vessels, slashed quotas, and forced fishermen out of the industry, the West Coast groundfish fishery has fully rebuilt, and the men and women who stuck it out say the turnaround is nothing short of remarkable.

In Oct. 2025, federal fishery officials declared yelloweye rockfish rebuilt, marking the recovery of the last of 10 groundfish species that were once fished to below a quarter of their healthy levels. The announcement came years ahead of schedule- regulators had not expected the slow-growing species to rebound until 2084.

“These fish were really severely limited to us,” Aaron Longton, founder of Port Orford Sustainable Seafood in Oregon, told Mongabay. “Now, we have huge quotas.”

The milestone caps a 25-year effort that began in 2000, when then- Commerce Secretary William Daley declared the West Coast groundfish industry a federal disaster. The declaration triggered an immediate reduction in catch quotas for the 10 overfished species. The Pacific Fishery Management Council advised NOAA to close nearly 20,000 square miles of ocean to trawlers, effectively shutting down most of the fishing grounds.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

California ocean salmon season options revealed by council

March 15, 2024 — The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) has produced three options for ocean salmon seasons beginning May 16, 2024. Two of the three alternatives would authorize short ocean salmon season dates and establish small harvest limits for commercial and sport fishing off California in 2024. The third alternative would be to close the ocean fisheries off California for a second consecutive year. The alternatives were approved by the PFMC for public review on Monday.

In response to several years of drought over the past decade, key California salmon target stocks are forecast to have 2024 abundance levels that, while higher than last year, are well below average. The 2024 stock abundance forecast for Sacramento River Fall Chinook, often the most abundant in the ocean fishery, is 213,600 adults. Meanwhile, abundance of Klamath River Fall Chinook is forecast at 180,700 adults. At this level of abundance, the Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery Management Plan authorizes only low levels of fishing on these stocks. It requires management to be designed to allow most of the adult population to return to the river to spawn.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman