Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Pollock trawlers feel cast as the villains of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

October 7, 2026 — Cole Hockema, operator of the 104-foot Pacific Storm, is disappointed that pollock fishermen like him have no champions in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

“It’s just such easy, low-hanging fruit, essentially, to get votes, is to be against trawling,” he said.

The pollock industry, America’s largest fishery, has been hit with a tsunami of popular discontent in Alaska this election season, with loud demands for a ban on trawling. The problem is bycatch — the thousands of salmon and metric tons of halibut the pollock fleet catches by accident. Anger about these wasted fish has sparked a movement that’s flexing its political muscle, and it could be decisive in Alaska’s tight Senate election.

Amid the barrage, the pollock industry — the source of the fish in fish sticks and McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish — is feeling misunderstood.

Trawl opponents focus their harshest critiques on the biggest players in the pollock fleet — the massive catcher-processors, floating factories that are homeported mainly in Seattle, and the substantial number of trawlers owned by out-of-state corporations.

Read the full article at Alask Public Media

US senator moves to raise tariffs on Ecuadorian shrimp

October 5, 2026 — U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi) has introduced a bill to raise tariffs on shrimp from Ecuador in a bid to discourage imports and support the domestic shrimp sector.

“Not much has changed since the federal government found that subsidized Ecuadorian shrimp contributed to material injury to the U.S. shrimp industry, except that Ecuador has only increased its shipments into the American market. As a result, Mississippi shrimpers and their counterparts across the Gulf face greater downward pressure on the prices they can get for their products,” Hyde-Smith said in a release. “The Ecuador Shrimp Tariff Act would work to level the playing field so that American shrimpers and processors can continue to compete and grow.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

As Trump rolls back endangered species protections, US lawmakers push bill to support their recovery

October 2, 2026 — With the administration of U.S. Donald Trump moving quickly to roll back endangered species protections, some U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill to support and improve species recovery efforts.

“Protecting the thousands of endangered species and strengthening recovery efforts must be a bipartisan cause – it is a shared responsibility that takes all of us. My new legislation with Senator [Pete] Ricketts [R-Nebraska] updates the Endangered Species Act to ensure policies that will help species on the verge of extinction survive and recover are implemented efficiently, based on science, and in partnership with private landowners and states. We must all do our part to leave the world a better place than we found it,” U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-California) said in a release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Scientists, fishermen want feds to keep funding deep-ocean observation system

September 29, 2026 — New England scientists and fishermen are urging the Trump administration to continue funding the Ocean Observatories Initiative — a network of buoys and gliders that collect data from remote parts of the ocean. The National Science Foundation began quietly dismantling the deep-ocean observation system last summer, until the effort was blocked by the U.S. Senate.

The hundreds of scientific instruments remain in the water for the moment, and the federal agency is now asking for public input on the future of the system, with a deadline for comments set for September 30.

Scientists are regarding the agency’s recent request for input with cautious optimism, said Hilary Palevsky, a  marine biogeochemist at Boston College. She said the abrupt removal of instruments from the water last summer “shook the community.”

“That was really different from how NSF has operated in the past,” she said.

While the system could certainly use some tweaks, upgrades and better integration with other ocean observation technology, she said, “that should be a decision that’s made with robust community engagement and peer review, not a top-down decision.”

Read the full article at wbur

ALASKA: Peltola, Sullivan take different approaches to reducing bycatch

September 29, 2026 — Bycatch has emerged as a defining fisheries issue in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, but the legislative records of former Rep. Mary Peltola and Sen. Dan Sullivan show different approaches to reducing incidental harvests and addressing trawling’s impacts.

Peltola, who is challenging Sullivan for his Senate seat, introduced the Bycatch Reduction and Mitigation Act in 0224 while serving in the U.S. House. Sullivan introduced his Bycatch Reduction Act this year, which advanced through the Senate Commerce Committee on Sept. 16.

According to the Alaska Beacon, the two proposals share some common ground, particularly federal support for technology to reduce bycatch. But there are notable differences in how that support would be distributed and how each proposal approaches fisheries management.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US Congress sends Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act to Trump

September 25, 2026 — U.S. Congress has sent the Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act to President Donald Trump to be signed into law after the Senate agreed to changes made to the legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The legislation aims to enable law enforcement to test where seafood products originated from, helping officers suss out products harvested through illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US Senator Ed Markey blocks quick passage of Bycatch Reduction Act

September 25, 2026 — U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) blocked an attempt by U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) to quickly pass his Bycatch Reduction Act in the Senate.

During remarks given on the Senate floor 23 September, Sullivan called on his fellow senators to pass his legislation, which calls for new trawling and bottom floor contact regulations and the implementation of salmon excluder devices for commercial fishing operations off the coast of Alaska in the Bering Sea. The legislation was first introduced at the beginning of the year, but Sullivan introduced an updated version with stronger provisions regarding bycatch and seafloor contact regulations in June. After the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation advanced the legislation earlier in September, Sullivan pushed to quickly pass the bill by unanimous consent.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Bipartisan fisheries management law would expand eDNA use

September 1, 2026 — Bipartisan legislation introduced this month by the co-chairs of the U.S. Senate Oceans Caucus relies on environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques pioneered by Cornell researcher David Lodge, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and past director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

The Fisheries Science Modernization Act would direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to incorporate eDNA tools into their assessment surveys of fish stocks – assessments that inform how many fish can be harvested by commercial and recreational fishers. Eight Republican, Democratic and independent senators co-sponsor the legislation, and multiple fishing industry and environmental protection organizations support it.

“When I started testing eDNA 17 years ago, I was interested in detecting rare species, such as emerging invasive species and endangered species,” Lodge said. “The focus of this legislation is quite different. Here, it’s not just about detecting whether a Pacific hake exists, it’s about estimating how many hake there are, based on how many distinct pieces of hake DNA you can find. It’s pretty astonishing to me that we in the scientific world working on eDNA have come this far, this fast.”

Read the full article at the Cornell Chronicle 

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