Saving Seafood

Upwelling saved the West Coast in 2025, NOAA reports

March 26, 2026 —  Despite a massive marine heatwave that gripped the eastern Pacific through much of 2025, the West Coast marine ecosystem held its own — thanks largely to strong wind-driven upwelling, according to NOAA Fisheries’ annual California Current Ecosystem Status Report.

“Warming continues to be an inescapable reality off the West Coast, but upwelling saved the day,” said Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center. The cold, nutrient-rich water pushed to the surface helped keep the ecosystem productive and held heatwave warmth offshore.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Fewer fish in West Coast waters will be federally regulated

March 18, 2026 — The West Coast’s most important fisheries manager has voted to remove 47 stocks of groundfish from active federal management. Amid massive cuts to federal budgets for science and regulatory activities, members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council were told their 50-year-old system is unsustainable.

The National Marine Fisheries Service instructed the nation’s regional fishery councils to use a specific process — a matrix examining risk versus value — to evaluate the more than 500 stocks they manage and to narrow the scope of their responsibilities. That work started with Pacific groundfish.

Merrick Burden is the executive director of the Pacific council, which oversees West Coast and Idaho fisheries. He said cuts from the Trump administration have slashed the staff of the federal regulators and scientists they work with.

“In our region, the estimates are around 40% of their staff, which is staggering,” he said. “So this has led to a national conversation of: how many species can we really manage? And we need to prioritize more.”   

Read the full article at KNKX

CALIFORNIA: Regulators set to reopen California’s commercial salmon fishery for the first time in three years

March 16, 2026 — Commercial salmon trawlers may be allowed to harvest fish in California for the first time in more than three years, although opportunities will remain limited as regulators work to enable stock recovery on the West Coast.

“Increased forecasts this year, particularly of Klamath and Sacramento River fall Chinook, created opportunities to expand fishing options compared with recent years,” PFMC Executive Director Merrick Burden said in the release. “The Council’s proposals aim to provide meaningful fishing opportunities while ensuring careful management of salmon populations.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

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

Missing whales are a sign that ecosystems in the Gulf of California are struggling, scientists say

March 4, 2026 — Three pairs of binoculars poke out between baseball caps and balaclavas in the middle of the Gulf of California.

A trio of Mexican scientists are looking toward the watery blue horizon for clues. Sperm whales haven’t been spotted here for years, and fin whales and dolphins aren’t as plentiful. Those that do turn up are more likely to appear malnourished or ill.

This vital ecosystem is struggling, scientists say, if Earth’s largest living creatures are any indication.

“Marine mammals, and specifically cetaceans, are considered the sentinels of health of the marine ecosystem,” said Hector Pérez Puig. He studies cetaceans, the broad category that includes whales and dolphins, at the Prescott College Kino Bay Center in Bahía de Kino on the Sonoran coast.

Read the full article at KJZZ

West Coast Waters Experiencing Another Large Marine Heatwave

March 4, 2026 — A massive marine heatwave has dominated waters off the West Coast since last summer. This marks only the third time on record that such a large section of the coastal ocean has remained so warm for so long—particularly into winter months—without it being an El Niño, NOAA scientists report. NOAA Fisheries and our partners are tracking possible heatwave impacts, which can include harmful algal blooms that can sicken marine mammals and close shellfish fisheries.

Third Time as Warm

At one point last September, the current marine heatwave rivaled the enormous 2013–2016 marine heatwave known as “The Blob” in terms of size and surface temperatures. The current heatwave has raised the temperature of waters along the West Coast roughly 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. On September 9, 2025, the northeast Pacific reached its highest ever average temperature of 20.6 degrees Celsius, or about 69 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s almost a half-degree warmer than ever before. Past marine heatwaves shook up marine ecosystems that drove shifts of species, die-offs, and other disruptions of ecosystems in the Northeast Pacific Ocean.

“We have forecast tools that provide some insight, but we are also watching carefully for implications on the marine ecosystem,” said Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. He runs the California Current Marine Heatwave Tracker. The tracker has been documenting marine heatwaves off the West Coast through NOAA data from satellites, ships, and buoys since 2019.

The North Pacific has repeatedly hit record or near-record temperatures since The Blob. Like others before it, the current marine heatwave weakened and receded from the coast in October and November 2025. Unlike others, it has since strengthened and returned. “We’re in La Niña, but water temperatures along our coast look much different,” Leising said. “The conditions are hard to reconcile. We want to be cautious in our interpretation, but at the same time this is not a situation that we have seen before.”

Heatwaves Shift Species

The current heatwave has brought news of species in unusual areas, such as tunas caught in large numbers in Alaska last fall. The Blob and other marine heatwaves have been shown to reduce the survival of salmon in the ocean, leaving fewer fish to catch and to return to rivers to spawn. “We know these marine heatwaves alter ecosystem conditions, which affects fish and other marine life,” Leising said. “We’re very interested in what the fishing fleet and others who are out on the water are seeing and are looking into new ways to collect this information. Are there species in unusual places, or what might be changing?”

In addition, the unusual warmth could begin to set the stage for a repeat of last year’s harmful algal bloom off Southern California. It hit unusually early in 2025 and killed hundreds of California sea lions, dolphins, and seabirds. Harmful algal blooms can also close fisheries, especially recreational fisheries involving shellfish that concentrate the toxins, affecting the coastal economy.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Emergency Groundfish Rule Keeps Fleet Fishing as Species Prove More Abundant

February 3, 2026 — The West Coast groundfish fleet will benefit from a new emergency rule increasing catch limits for three key species that have proved more abundant than previously thought. West Coast groundfish make up the largest fishery by volume on the West Coast. The decision provides greater opportunity for the fishery, supplying more domestic seafood for the country.

The rule change improves the competitiveness of the groundfish fleet by increasing catch limits for each of the three species by about 10 percent. The fishery has rebounded from a collapse about 25 years ago to reclaim their place in the nation’s seafood counters.

NOAA Fisheries issued the emergency rule issued this week. It raises the catch limits for shortspine thornyhead, canary rockfish and petrale sole to reflect updated projections showing that larger volumes of the species are available. The higher limits will give the fleet greater flexibility to continue fishing for these and other important species such as Pacific hake or whiting, while ensuring the catch remains sustainable.

“We are undertaking this emergency action to change our regulations based on this new information,” said Ryan Wulff, assistant regional administrator in NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region. “We looked at the science and it told us the picture had changed, so we are acting as quickly as possible to provide more opportunities for our fleet.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Pacific halibut catch declines as spawning biomass reaches lowest point in 40 years

December 12, 2025 — The most recent Pacific halibut fishing season ended on 7 December, and preliminary data shows that commercial landings across the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada are down.

By early December, coastwide commercial landings of halibut totaled 16.7 million pounds, down 16 percent from the same time last year and reaching just 80 percent of the allowable catch limit for the season.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA cuts back on seismic data used for West Coast tsunami alerts

November 12, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ended a contract with the Alaska Earthquake Center that helped maintain some seismic stations and transmit data in real time.

Alaska state seismologist and director of the center, Michael West, warned that the termination of this contract, which is around two decades old, will lead to less timely and accurate tsunami warnings that could affect Alaska, Hawaii and the West Coast.

It’s unclear why NOAA chose to terminate the contract, worth around $300,000 annually. David Snider, a tsunami warning coordinator with NOAA’s National Tsunami Warning Center, declined to comment, deferring to NOAA public affairs, which did not respond to request for comment.

Every time an earthquake happens, NOAA’s Tsunami Warning Centers determine whether to issue a tsunami alert within five minutes. Depending on where the earthquake originated, coastal communities could have anywhere from 20 minutes to six hours to evacuate or prepare for a tsunami.

Read the full article at The Columbian

NOAA Fisheries establishes task force to address West Coast humpback whale entanglements

November 4, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries has established a federal task force to address the problem of humpback whales becoming entangled in commercial fishing gear along the west coast.

The announcement came just prior to a 31 October deadline set by the courts in response to a lawsuit brought by conservation NGO the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). The group sued NOAA Fisheries in 2022, claiming the agency’s sablefish fishery permit didn’t incorporate any plans to reduce entanglements or harm to the endangered whales. In 2023, NOAA Fisheries signed a legal agreement as part of a settlement, committing to create a task force by 31 October 2025.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource