Saving Seafood

New tagging study tracks Dungeness crab movement in Puget Sound

July 8, 2026 — State and tribal fishery managers in Washington are using a floy-tag study to track how Dungeness crab move through parts of Puget Sound, with the goal of improving how catch quotas and fishing seasons are set in areas where crab populations have struggled.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), working with the Suquamish and Jamestown tribes, has tagged and released 885 legal-size male Dungeness crab since September 2025 across Marine Area 9 (Admiralty Inlet), Marine Area 10 (Seattle and Bremerton area) and the portion of Marine Area 12 (Hood Canal) north of Ayock Point.

In late September 2025, WDFW and the Suquamish Tribe tagged and released 555 crab across six sites in Marine Area 10, ranging from Alki Point in West Seattle north to Apple Cove Point near Kingston. As of June 25, 2026, 84 of those crab had been recaptured in recreational, state, and tribal commercial fisheries.

On June 9, 2026, WDFW and the Jamestown Tribe tagged and released another 330 crab in Marine Areas 9 and 12. Two had been recaptured as of June 25.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Studies document impact of warm streams on juvenile salmon

July 6, 2026 — New studies at the University of British Columbia confirm the increasing heat stress for juvenile salmon at this vulnerable stage of their lives.

The studies by UBC’s Pacific Salmon Ecology and Conservation Lab document how young fish cope with heat differently than older fish and that current methods of measuring that stress underestimate the risks these fish face in warming waterways.

The study exploring the biological mechanisms that influence heat tolerance was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The study examining swimming performance and survival at different temperatures was accepted by the journal Conservation Physiology.

UBC researchers focused in these two studies on juvenile Chinook salmon, but have

previously examined thermal tolerance in all life stages of sockeye and adult coho, adult Chinook, and adult pink, said studies leader Scott Hinch, a professor of fisheries conservation at UBC. Similar conditions have been observed in Alaska, Washington state, Oregon and California, he said.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Environmental group sues federal government to boost protections for Pacific coast sunflower sea stars

June 29, 2026 — The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, pushing to finalize long‑delayed protections for the imperiled sunflower sea star.

Sunflower sea stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) are enormous compared to their counterparts, about 3 feet wide with up to 24 arms. They display a wide range of colors, often in combinations including bright orange, yellow-red, brown, purple, pink and occasionally blue. They occur throughout intertidal and subtidal coastal waters of the Northeast Pacific Ocean from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, to at least northern Baja California, Mexico.

The animals used to be abundant along Oregon’s coast — but nearly 90% of the entire population has been lost due to a gruesome disease known as Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. It causes their arms to twist, melt away and fall off, ultimately resulting in death.

Read the full article at KLCC

Commerce Department releases $123.6 million in fishery disaster aid

June 24, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Commerce announced June 17 the allocation of $123.6 million in fishery disaster relief funding to address a series of commercial fishery collapses that struck Alaska, Oregon, California, and Washington’s Squaxin Island Tribe between 2019 and 2023. The money was appropriated by Congress through the American Relief Act, 2025.

The funding covers six previously declared fishery resource disasters: the 2023–2024 Bering Sea snow crab fishery in Alaska; the 2023 Oregon ocean commercial salmon fishery; the 2022 Chignik salmon fishery in Alaska; the 2023 Upper Cook Inlet East Side Setnet salmon fishery in Alaska; the 2024 California Sacramento River Fall Chinook and Klamath River Fall Chinook ocean and inland salmon fisheries; and the 2023 Squaxin Island Tribe Puget Sound Fall Chum salmon fishery in Washington.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Northwest’s yanked observatories to return to ocean after Trump administration backs down

June 19, 2026 — The Trump administration has reversed course on its effort to shut down a network of ocean research stations in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The National Science Foundation on Thursday announced a halt to the dismantling of floating scientific observatories off Alaska, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and Greenland.

Researchers were offloading the last of the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s six high-tech data buoys from Pacific Northwest waters onto a flatbed truck in Newport, Oregon, Thursday morning when they got the word: The science foundation was turning the dismantling ship around.

“The U.S. National Science Foundation appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders that have informed us they rely on data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI),” the agency’s statement reads. “Effective immediately, NSF will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance.”

Read the full article at KUOW

Deep sea observation system that tracks climate change saved from disassembly

June 19, 2026 — A critical deep ocean observation network that includes a long-standing station off the coast of Alaska has been saved from getting dismantled. As first reported by the New York Times, the Trump administration dropped its plan to get rid of the ocean and climate tracking system after the U.S. Senate unanimously blocked the move this week.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley sponsored the measure, which prohibits the National Science Foundation from spending federal money to remove the equipment anchored off the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina and in an area called the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Murkowski said the Ocean Observatories Initiative collects hard-to-access information that’s critical for understanding warming seas.

“This is all happening at a time when everybody’s talking about El Niño, and what that is going to bring in terms of the potential for extreme weather events,” Murkowski said. “This is not the time to be turning off one of our most valuable scientific assets.”

Read the full article at KTOO

7 Ways El Niño and Large Marine Heatwave Could Affect West Coast Marine Species

June 15, 2026 — A large marine heatwave has bathed parts of the West Coast in very warm ocean waters over the past year, breaking temperature records in the Pacific. NOAA has also announced that El Niño has developed in the tropical Pacific and is predicted to intensify to a moderate or strong level this fall. El Niño represents another form of marine warming , though with different drivers and influences. The prolonged period of high temperatures could affect fisheries and marine life in the California Current that have already been buffeted by shifting ocean conditions over the last decade.

One factor may help dampen the impacts, though: The same strong upwelling of cool water along the coast that fuels the West Coast ecosystem with nutrients could help keep some warmer waters at bay, as happened in 2025.

We have seen these back-to-back heat events before. About a decade ago, a major marine heatwave known as “The Blob” began raising ocean temperatures off the West Coast, peaking in 2015. One of the strongest El Niños on record followed in 2015–2016, amplifying ocean warmth—as the current forecast predicts for the coming year. That was a worst-case scenario that drove changes around the world. The Pacific endured a record count of tropical cyclones and the Caribbean Sea and parts of Africa experienced severe droughts. That situation was more extreme than now, with the Blob lasting longer and affecting the entire West Coast compared to the smaller recent marine heatwave. However, research and observations during that unprecedented climatic pileup suggest the kind of changes we may see in the coming months along the West Coast. Though these changes are centered in the Pacific, they have far-reaching impacts.

Here are some of the ways warming water can impact marine life, coastal communities, and economies.

1. Shifting Fisheries

Research found that some commercial West Coast species, such as market squid, may be sensitive to these long-term and episodic changes in ocean temperatures. The shift of market squid north along the West Coast in response to warming from the Blob and subsequent El Niño created new fishing opportunities in Oregon and Washington during the Blob that remained afterward. Squid landings in Oregon rose from none in 2015 to nearly 3 million pounds worth more than $1 million in 2016 and continued to grow rapidly through 2020. This provided new opportunities for purse seine vessels whose opportunities in other fisheries affected by the Blob—such as sardine, Alaska herring, and Alaska salmon—had dwindled. Seafood processors in Oregon scaled up to handle more squid, and Oregon fisheries managers developed their first regulations for the emerging squid fishery. Market squid had been the largest commercial fishery by volume in California, but California landings dropped by more than half from 2014 to 2015. They remain substantially lower than they were prior to the Blob and El Niño.

Meanwhile, tropical species such as whale sharks and hammerhead sharks made northerly appearances off Southern California while fishing vessels caught albacore tuna much closer to shore as far north as Washington. Fishing boats caught a skipjack tuna off the Copper River in Alaska, and surveys turned up an ocean sunfish and thresher shark off southeast Alaska. Pacific bluefin tuna increased in number and size in U.S. waters, exciting recreational anglers and generating new revenue for the charter fleet. This year, Southern California anglers have begun catching dorado and yellowfin tuna much earlier in the year than usual, suggesting these northerly shifts may have begun.

2. Hungry California Sea Lion Pups

Higher sea surface temperatures also affect other fish species, including sardines and anchovy. These fish are high-energy staple foods for California sea lions that breed in Southern California’s Channel Islands, but declined with warming ocean temperatures. Sea lions turned to lower quality forage species such as rockfish and squid. Nursing sea lion mothers had to travel farther to find the food their pups needed, forcing pups to fast for longer periods at the rookery. The weight of sea lion pups declined, according to long-term studies in the Channel Islands . In El Niño years, many hungry pups set off on their own in search of food before their usual weaning time. In 2013–2016, as many as 4,000 pups arrived on California beaches, skinny and hungry. These extreme events taxed rehabilitation facilities and prompted NOAA Fisheries to declare an Unusual Mortality Event for the species. Researchers later estimated that an increase of 1 degree Celsius in sea surface temperatures could reduce the growth rate of the sea lion population to zero. A 2-degree rise would reduce the population size by about 7 percent.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Ocean observatories go dark off Pacific Northwest coast

June 4, 2026 — The Trump administration has quietly removed an array of floating ocean observatories from waters off the Washington coast, KUOW has learned.

Their removal is part of a national dismantling of a network of sophisticated data buoys in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency created in 1950 to support scientific research, announced in May that it had started what it called a “descoping” of its Ocean Observatories Initiative.

Those observatories monitor surface and underwater conditions 24/7 in what the science foundation calls “the most technologically advanced observational networks in the oceans.”

The moored buoys keep the pulse of the oceans as their temperature and chemistry rapidly change and provide real-time updates to mariners heading out into possibly dangerous waves. Autonomous “gliders” also roam the ocean, gathering data on the go.

Read the full article at KUOW

WASHINGTON: Washington state reclassifying golden mussels as a banned invasive species

April 27, 2026 — The U.S. state of Washington is taking emergency action to reclassify golden mussels as a Prohibited Level 1 invasive species following the discovery of the species in Oregon earlier in the month.

Originally from China and Southeast Asia, golden mussels are an invasive species in the U.S. that are known to cause damage to infrastructure and reduce water quality, harming local fishing operations. The species was first detected in California in 2024, but a second instance was detected in Oregon in April 2026. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), a watercraft was intercepted at the Ashland Boat Inspection Station carrying golden mussels.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Whale deaths are up on Oregon and Washington coasts, but what’s causing them?

April 22, 2026 — A stranded whale was found on Seaside Beach last week. It was the fourth whale found on the Oregon Coast this year.

The number of whales washing up on Oregon and Washington coasts have started to raise concerns for both scientists and beachgoers alike, who wonder why the giant mammals seem to be dying more frequently.

“The last month has started to get a little unusual in terms of the number of strandings of gray whales in particular,” said Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Science Center.

Two of the whales found in Oregon recently were Gray whales. In Washington, there have been 13.

Read the full article at KOIN