Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska fisheries in 2025: turmoil, economic and environmental challenges and some bright spots

December 26, 2025 — For Alaska’s fishing industry and fishing-dependent communities, 2025 was a year of turmoil and uncertainty, much of it imposed by ideological pursuits from the new Trump administration.

The short-lived agency called the Department of Government Efficiency hacked away at federal funding for science across the board. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in particular was in its crosshairs; the Heritage Institute’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump administration heaped scorn on NOAA, saying its National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” The NMFS’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which does the bulk of the research on which fishery managers depend, was among the agencies that suffered deep budget and staffing cuts.

The prospect of more cuts is unsettling, some officials said. “I guess now we’re getting to a point that I’m getting really concerned and almost freaked out about how much data that we’re potentially losing that we’re used to having,” Anne Vanderhoeven, a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, said on Dec. 4 during that body’s December meeting.

Read the full article at the Kodiak Daily Mirror

Watermen, fishermen challenge regulations under new Trump administration order

December 26, 2025 — On the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, fifth-generation charter boat captain Troy Wilkens is fishing for striped sea bass. Lately, Captain Troy says business has been slow, largely, he believes, due to overbearing state and federal regulations.

One recent rule reduced the number of striped bass his boat can carry at a time, from two fish per person down to one.

And Captain Troy says similar regulations have piled up, choking both his business and his passion.

“This was supposed to be my retirement. I come out here and do this, and it just doesn’t work out,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s like every year they ask for something else. You need to sacrifice a fish. You need to use circle hooks

Read the full article at WMUR

Trump Halts Revolution Wind Work for Second Time

December 23, 2025 — The Trump administration on Monday ordered a halt to construction on five East Coast offshore wind projects, including Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind.

The Interior Department said it is pausing all leases for large-scale offshore wind projects that are currently under construction, affecting the Vineyard Wind 1, Revolution Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1 projects.

U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Monday, “At a time when working people in Rhode Island are struggling with high costs on everything, Trump should not be canceling energy projects that are nearly ready to deliver reliable power to the grid at below-market rates and help lower costs.”

The Revolution Wind project, located 15 miles off Rhode Island’s shore and 85% complete, was expected to deliver enough electricity to the New England grid to power 350,000 homes, or 2.5% of the region’s electricity supply, beginning in 2026. Revolution Wind was projected to save Connecticut and Rhode Island ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars over 20 years.

Christian Roselund, co-leader of Climate Action Rhode Island’s Yes to Wind campaign, said Monday, “Donald Trump is getting desperate. The Trump administration’s new attempt to freeze offshore wind projects under construction – after courts quickly threw out the last stop work order on Revolution Wind – shows again that he doesn’t understand what it means to be a U.S. president and that he wants instead to be a dictator.”

Read the full article at EcoRI

Trump team pauses wind projects, including one off Jersey Shore

December 23, 2025 — The Trump administration announced a pause on five offshore wind farms, including one off the coasts of New Jersey and New York, citing national security concerns.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced on Dec. 22 that the pause would affect New York’s Empire Wind 1 power project, which will be about 19 miles offshore of Long Branch once complete. The pause also affects Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts, Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind and Sunrise Wind southeast of Long Island.

The rotation of wind turbines and their reflective towers create radar interference called “clutter,” according to the Department of Interior. That interference obscures the radar detection of moving objects and creates the appearance of false objects near the wind farms, according to the department.

The pause will give wind farm developers and state and federal authorities time to address the projects’ risks to national security, Burgum said in a news release.

Read the full article at Asbury Park Press

The Trump administration pauses wind projects off New England, New York and Virginia

December 23, 2025 — The Trump administration said Monday it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast due to what it said were national security risks identified by the Pentagon.

The pause, effective immediately, is the latest step the administration has taken to hobble offshore wind in its push against renewable energy sources. It comes two weeks after a federal judge struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking wind energy projects, calling it unlawful.

The administration said the pause will give the Interior Department, which oversees offshore wind, time to work with the Defense Department and other agencies to assess the possible ways to mitigate any security risks posed by the projects.

“The prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.”

The statement did not detail the national security risks.

Wind proponents slammed the move, saying it was another blow by the administration against clean energy.

The administration said leases are paused for the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind in Rhode Island and Connecticut, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and two projects in New York: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind.

Read the full article at KDLG

Long Island Wind Farms Respond to Federal Suspension

December 23, 2025 — Two of the five offshore wind farms whose leases were paused by the Trump administration on Monday are designed to power Long Island’s electric grid, and wind farm companies here have begun to respond to the news.

The U.S. Department of the Interior said Monday it was “pausing” the leases for 90 days due to what it described as “national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports.”

“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our East Coast population centers,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a statement Monday. “The Trump administration will always prioritize the security of the American people.”

On Long Island, the Danish wind farm giant Ørsted is in the middle of construction for Sunrise Wind, a 924 megawatt, 84-turbine offshore wind farm about 30 miles off the coast of Montauk. Its transmission cable is slated to come ashore at Smith Point County Park, where it is being installed down William Floyd Parkway and a series of other roads to a substation in Holbrook.

Read the full article at the East End Beacon

 

NOAA Fisheries head says science is his priority

December 19, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator Eugenio Pineiro Soler said his top priority at the U.S. agency is improving science.

“My priorities when I took this job was number one science,” Soler said. “We have to have better science. We have to improve the science. We have to improve not our effort but our products, our results. And that’s number one priority of this administration.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Judge denies US Wind request to halt Trump administration attacks

December 18, 2025 — A federal judge has declined to issue an injunction that would have protected US Wind from what it says are Trump administration attempts to kill its planned wind farm off Ocean City, for which it already has permits.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher in Baltimore noted in her decision — handed down Tuesday — that US Wind technically could move forward with constructing its wind farm off of Delmarva.

Even though President Donald Trump’s (R) administration has announced its intention to reevaluate the crucial Construction and Operations Plan (COP) approval issued to US Wind during the waning days of President Joe Biden’s (D) administration, it has not actually revoked the permit, Gallagher wrote in her ruling.

In a previous decision, Gallagher preliminarily rejected a request from the Trump administration to remand the permit back to the U.S. Department of the Interior for reconsideration. Gallagher ruled that the government needed to present more information in order for her to make a ruling. But she allowed the department to carry on with any “internal review” of the permit, as desired.

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

Ecosystem shifts, glacial flooding and ‘rusting rivers’ among Alaska impacts in Arctic report

December 17, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its annual Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, which documents the way rising temperatures, diminished ice, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers and vegetation shifts are transforming the region and affecting its people. The agency has released the report for 20 years as a way to track changes in the Arctic.

“The Arctic continues to warm faster than the global average, with the 10 years that comprise the last decade marking the 10 warmest years on record,” Steve Thur, NOAA’s acting administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research and the agency’s acting chief scientist, said at a news conference Tuesday.

The report card is a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 scientists from 13 countries, with numerous coauthors from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was officially released at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans, where Thur and other officials held the news conference.

The report is the first under the second Trump administration, at a time when the federal government’s commitment to documenting Arctic climate change has diminished: The president has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and federal departments are cancelling climate change-related research and projects, as well as scrubbing climate information from public view.

Under directives from the Trump administration, NOAA no longer provides information that the National Snow and Ice Data Center once used to monitor sea ice and snow cover, for example. The Colorado-based center now relies on satellite information from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for its sea ice reports, and it has reduced its analysis.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon