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.
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.
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.
March 4, 2025 — The long term impacts of recent staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are still unknown, but fishery managers on the West Coast called the situation troubling.
On Thursday, NOAA laid off more than 800 workers as the Trump administration continues its push to reduce the federal workforce.
West Coast lawmakers have warned that the cuts — and the potential for more layoffs in the future — could endanger lives and threaten maritime commerce and the fishing industry. NOAA manages federal tribal, commercial and recreational fisheries and includes the National Weather Service, which provides weather forecast data.
For West Coast fisheries, the firings have created uncertainty for fishery management now.
This week, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a quasi-governmental body that recommends management measures for a number of fisheries on the West Coast, will meet to begin — among other things — the process of setting summer and fall salmon fisheries.
July 3, 2024 — Alaskan and West Coast fishery stakeholders are still in the dark as to who will represent them on their regional fishery management councils.
The appointments of 22 new and returning members to six of eight of the nation’s councils were announced on June 28 by the US Dept. of Commerce. The Secretary of Commerce appoints council seats from state governors’ lists of nominees. Each serves three-year terms.
“Appointments to the Pacific and North Pacific fishery management councils will be announced later this summer,” the Commerce press release said.
“My understanding is that the decision on those appointments have not yet been finalized,” said Julie Fair, Public Affairs Officer at NOAA’s Alaska Regional Office. “The appointments for Pacific and North Pacific Fishery Management Councils will be forthcoming later this summer, and we do not anticipate any lapse in voting during their September/October Council meetings,” Fair added.
June 27, 2024 — Conservation groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday morning against the National Marine Fisheries Service for missing its deadline to determine if the tope shark, also known as the soupfin shark, warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The conservation groups hope that listing the tope shark under the act will trigger habitat protections and a review of fishing practices that could aid in the species’ recovery.
The service had initially announced in April 2022 that the tope shark might need protection, but the decision has yet to be made, despite a legal obligation to decide by February 2023.
The tope shark, which inhabits the waters off California, Oregon and Washington, is facing a critical threat due to specific targeting by commercial fishing for its liver oil — which had been historically used for cosmetics production and is now used in the biofuel industry — its meat and its fins, which are considered a delicacy.
It also faces threats from bycatch and entanglement in Mexico’s gillnets, particularly off the coast of Southern California. These gillnets — fishing traps that are hung vertically, trapping fish by their gills — have contributed to the decline of the tope shark populations, which, according to the center, has plummeted by nearly 90% over the past 80 years.
June 18, 2024 — Between 2014 and 2015, a “blob” of record-breaking warm water traversed the west coast of the U.S., gaining media attention as the warm temperatures wreaked havoc on the bottom of the food chain, causing fisheries like sockeye, pink, and coho salmon to collapse and thousands of sea lions and sea birds to starve.
However, amid this devastation, one microscopic creature thrived or “bloomed”—a neurotoxin-producing diatom called Pseudo-nitzschia—causing devastating multi-million dollar losses for many West Coast commercial and tribal crab and shellfish fisheries that had to shut down due to the risk of toxin-contaminated seafood.
The toxin produced by Pseudo-nitzschia, domoic acid, can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning in humans, with symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, headache, loss of short-term memory, motor weakness, seizures, and irregular heart rhythms.
Beyond the clear ecological and economic devastation, this 2015 blob-associated harmful algal bloom also left the scientific community in shock. The prevailing understanding was that toxic Pseudo-nitzschia blooms were associated with nutrient-rich, cold-water pulses of water seasonally brought up or “upwelled” from the depths along the Pacific west coast.
With the massive hot blob of water hovering over the coastline in 2015, there was little to no upwelling. So how did a toxic bloom occur during this massive heat wave?
December 17, 2023 — Recent NOAA research forecasts that three high-value groundfish species will migrate toward deeper offshore waters along the United States West Coast due to climate change in the near future, which will likely require fishery managers to adapt their strategies in response.
NOAA’s study, “Species redistribution creates unequal outcomes for multispecies fisheries under projected climate change” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances in August 2023. It shows that sablefish, dover sole, and shortspine thornyhead are projected to migrate to deeper offshore waters, posing challenges for fishers that may need to travel longer distances and fish at greater depths or shift their operations completely to target more accessible species.
June 21, 2023 — The Pacific Maritime Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union have arrived at a six-year contract agreement that will cover 22,000 union dock workers at all 29 major ports along the U.S. West Coast.
The ILWU and PMA, which began negotiating the deal 1 July, declined to elaborate on its details, but it apparently includes a sharing of the surge in pandemic-era cargo profits in the form of retroactive compensation for employees, Reuters reported. It remains subject to ratification by the union.
April 11, 2023 — Salmon anglers and environmental conservationists alike are working to restore the west coast salmon population in light of salmon season being officially cancelled last week.
According to Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) Executive Director Glen Spain, the consequences that led to salmon season being cancelled this year will likely affect the next few season as well.
This is because there is a three-year period of time between when a salmon is born and when it makes it out to the ocean; but over this past three-year period, multiple water policies led to even lower water levels in California rivers, which lower and warmer than usual due to the drought in the state.
This caused many salmon to die in the rivers before they could even begin their journeys to the ocean.