Saving Seafood

New study paints gloomy picture of climate change’s impact on commercial fishing

April 22, 2025 — A new study of some of California’s most commercially significant aquatic species paints a grim picture for the future of the state’s fishing industry under the growing threat of climate change.

The study, compiled by a host of researchers including federal and state scientists as well as researchers from UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis, looked at 34 aquatic species in an attempt to gauge how each would fare under predicted climate change scenarios.

Among the species studied were Dungeness crab, red abalone, Pacific herring, Pismo clams, pink shrimp, Pacific bonito and California spiny lobster. The group ranked each by their level of vulnerability to changing environmental conditions.

“The most striking thing that we found is that among the species that were ranked as the most highly vulnerable happened to also be some of California’s economically valuable and culturally important species,” said Mikaela Provost, assistant professor of fisheries ecology at UC Davis and co-author of the study.

California’s oceans are highly productive due to seasonal upwelling which keeps water temperatures cool and filled with nutrients. But models of future conditions forecast disruption through rising temperatures, deoxygenation and potential changes in circulation.

Read the full story at NBC Bay Area

NOAA Veterans Corps Progress By The Numbers, 2021

November 11, 2021 — The NOAA Veterans Corps provides opportunities for military veterans to build their skills and work experience contributing to habitat and fisheries restoration projects.

Through strong partnerships, the months- to years-long paid training program for veterans includes marine and freshwater restoration for native fish and other natural resources. Veterans Corpsmembers’ experiences can also include:

  • Researching the effects of climate change on marine invertebrates
  • Tracking the status of habitat restoration projects and fish populations
  • Helping control invasive marine species

These efforts are helping a variety of threatened and endangered species recover, including:

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

$8.3 Million in Funding Recommended for Coastal and Marine Habitat Restoration Projects

July 16, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA is recommending nearly $8.3 million in funding to continue 23 ongoing habitat restoration projects through our Community-based Restoration Program. These projects will restore habitat for coastal and marine species in 13 states and territories and provide benefits for communities and the environment. The projects will also support coastal communities that rely on healthy habitats for benefits like clean drinking water, flood and storm protection, and industries like boating, fishing, and tourism.

By reopening rivers to fish passage, reconnecting rivers to their floodplains, and reducing coastal runoff, these projects will support oysters, corals, and several fish species. They will also aid in the recovery of four NOAA Species in the Spotlight:

Recipients and their partners include nonprofits; federal, state, and local agencies; tribes; private sector businesses; and academia.

Read the full release here

Can the long-lost abalone make a comeback in California?

November 19, 2019 — Hunched over a tank inside the Bodega Marine Laboratory, alongside bubbling vats of seaweed and greenhouses filled with algae, Kristin Aquilino coaxed a baby white abalone onto her hand.

She held out the endangered sea snail—no larger than a bottle cap—like a delicate jewel. After years of fretting over their health, cleaning tanks and filtering the saltwater just right, one tiny oops could undo it all.

“They’re like human hemophiliacs,” Aquilino said, using a plastic ruler to measure the stubborn gastropod as it twisted and squirmed. “Even a small cut, they can bleed to death.”

To the untrained eye, they appear pretty drab. But in this humming lab, home to more white abalone than in the wild, these invertebrates have captured minds and even hearts. They’re the unsung canary in the coal mine—their vanishing numbers sounding the alarm of human greed and the perils we face as the land and oceans burn.

Abalone once were to California what lobster is to Maine and blue crab to Maryland, so plentiful they stacked one on top of another like colorful paving stones. Californians held abalone bakes, spun abalone folk tales, sang abalone love songs. They grew large and hardy and fetched extraordinary prices. One diver once said it was like pulling $100 bills from the seafloor.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Gulf shrimpers push for monitoring

January 8, 2018 — The $5.7 billion dollar U.S. industry built on the importation of foreign shrimp is not happy about a monitoring provision tucked away inside a pending federal budget bill, though the Gulf shrimp industry is all for it.

The provision, part of Senate Bill 1662, would remove a stay on including imported shrimp under the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), a new set of reporting and record-keeping requirements implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service. SIMP is aimed at preventing illegal, unreported and unregulated-caught and/or misrepresented seafood from entering the U.S. market.

Jan. 1, 2018, was the compliance deadline for 10 other species under SIMP, though shrimp and abalone were to be phased in later. The provision in S.B. 1662, if it takes effect, would give the U.S. import shrimp industry 30 days to prepare for the new reporting requirements. Imports represent 90 percent of the U.S. shrimp industry.

“Importers of record,” typically U.S.-based seafood dealers, would be required to maintain records for at least two years on the type of species caught, when and where the species were harvested, quantity and weight of the harvest, type of gear used, name and flag of the fishing vessel, first point of landing and other data.

Read the full story at the Brownsville Herald

 

Flocking to Robben Island: Tourists by Day, Poachers by Night

August 16, 2016 — Robben Island in South Africa is getting to be notorious again — and this time it’s not for racial oppression.

The apartheid-era prison on the island is now a tourist attraction, where visitors from around the world pause with reverence outside the cell where Nelson Mandela was kept. The ferry ride back to the mainland merely deepens the sense of isolation that the inmates must have felt.

But the waters surrounding Robben Island, just off the coast near Cape Town, also happen to be among the richest in the world for delicious shellfish — especially abalone, which is highly prized in Asia. That has made the island a hot spot for shellfish poaching.

At night, when the island is closed to tourists, poachers in inflatable boats known as rubber ducks often make their way toward its rocky coastline and dive illegally in the shallows in search of the mollusks.

Read the full story at the New York Times

California Fishermen Fight to Restore Otter-Free Zone

May 9, 2016 — PASADENA, Calif. — California’s shellfish industry fought the federal government’s termination of a “no-otter zone” along the Southern California coast at a Ninth Circuit hearing on Friday.

Four fishing industry groups sued the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2013, claiming its decision to end a long-disputed sea otter translocation program would “severely compromise if not destroy” shellfish and other marine fisheries on the southern coast.

Nixing the program would lead more than 300 sea otters to occupy a previously “otter-free zone” within 10 years and prey on the shellfish which fishermen depend on for their livelihood, the plaintiffs claimed in their 2013 complaint.

But environmental groups had long pushed for the government to end the program, claiming it was a disaster from the start and that it bowed to the interests of the oil and fishing industries.

The program relocated 140 sea otters to San Nicholas Island and established an otter-free zone south of Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, where fishermen harvest sea urchin, abalone and lobster.

Under the program, fishermen who accidentally killed otters in the zone could not be federally prosecuted, and the government was to use nonlethal means to capture any otters that wandered into the zone.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service