Saving Seafood

Fishery managers worry about effects of NOAA cuts

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.

Read the full article at KMUN

Council appointments delayed until ‘later this summer’

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. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Conservationists sue feds over failure to protect West Coast tope sharks

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.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

How a microscopic coastal creature may become deadlier in our changing climate

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?

Read the full article at PHYS.org

High-value US West Coast stocks may migrate out of reach due to climate change

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.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Longshoremen contract deal averts US West Coast supply chain crunch

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.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

West Coast fishermen, other stakeholders grapple with salmon season closure

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.

Read the full article at KRCR

Dungeness crab die-off underway along US West Coast

November 7, 2022 — An important species of crab found primarily along the West Coast is fighting off a combination of stressors that experts at the North Atlantic and Atmospheric Administration say has fishermen finding piles of dead shellfish, and the impacts are affecting the economy.

Dungeness crabs are typically found along water beds, and their harvest can be worth a quarter-billion dollars annually.

Read the full article at Fox 6

US West Coast seafood groups concerned about potential reintroduction of sea otters

June 17, 2022 — A plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to reintroduce sea otters to the West Coast of the U.S. is continuing to draw concern from fishing industry advocates.

The USFWS has had plans to reintroduce wild sea otters to habitats in the Northwest U.S. for years. A bill signed in 2020 by former U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a review of the potential impacts the reintroduction could have on the region – and in 2021, the industry requested a thorough review of how it might impact fisheries and coastal economies.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Five California offshore wind leases proposed

May 27, 2022 — Five areas totaling 373,268 acres off central and northern California are proposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for the first West Coast offshore wind energy lease auction.

The proposed sale notice, to be published May 31 in the Federal Register, will kick off a 60-day public comment period. Three lease areas are proposed for the Morro Bay wind energy area off the central cost and two in the northern Humboldt area.

“Today’s action represents tangible progress towards achieving the Administration’s vision for a clean energy future offshore California, while creating a domestic supply chain and good-paying union jobs,” said BOEM Director Amanda Lefton in announcing the plan. “BOEM is committed to robust stakeholder engagement and ensuring any offshore wind leasing is done in a manner that avoids or minimizes potential impacts to the ocean and ocean users.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman