Saving Seafood

Pacific studies axed in Pentagon research cuts

March 24, 2025 — Steven Mana ‘oakamai Johnson, a Cornell University professor who grew up on Saipan, has devoted his life to studying the ocean and how people in the Pacific depend on the fish in it to feed themselves and support their economies. Lately he’s been studying when they fight over them.

He has been working on a Pentagon-funded project called “Future Fish Wars : Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth, ” for which the military awarded a grant in 2023. It was looking at how illegal fishing, climate change and changing migration patterns of fish species could contribute to new conflicts between rival fishermen that could escalate into much larger confrontations—looking mostly at the Pacific and the Arctic.

“All the fisheries climate research shows that there’s going to be a reshuffling of the deck of where these trans-boundary fish stocks are going to end up, ” said Johnson. “It might be important to understand, you know, what is the texture of that scenario ? Who’s involved ? You know, where has fisheries conflict happened in the past, what was driving it ?”

The South China Sea, once considered among the world’s richest fishing grounds, has been depleted by years of industrialized fishing methods. Today, Chinese fishermen—backed by the Chinese military—have clashed violently with fishermen from neighboring countries, creating an increasingly militarized standoff. China has also sent its vast state-subsidized fishing fleet across the globe, with large groups of vessels descending on South America’s coastlines.

Read the full articles at Yahoo! News

Fishermen want to go green but say DOGE cuts prevent that

March 19, 2025 — Commercial fishermen and seafood processors and distributors looking to switch to new, lower-carbon emission systems say the federal funding they relied on for this work is either frozen or unavailable due to significant budget cuts promoted by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The changes are designed to replace old diesel-burning engines and outdated at-sea cooling systems and are touted by environmentalists as a way to reduce seafood’s carbon footprint. Salmon harvesters in Washington state, scallop distributors in Maine and halibut fishermen in Alaska are among those who told The Associated Press their federal commitments for projects like new boat engines and refrigeration systems have been rescinded or are under review.

“The uncertainty. This is not a business-friendly environment,” said Togue Brawn, a Maine seafood distributor who said she is out tens of thousands of dollars. “If they want to make America great again, then honor your word and tell people what’s going on.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Court says NOAA must explain lack of protective measures for corals

March 10, 2025 — A federal judge has ordered NOAA to explain why it declined to adopt regulations to protect 20 coral species designated in 2014 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

In a 42-page decision, Judge Micah W.J. Smith of the District Court of Hawaii said NOAA Fisheries, also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, failed to provide adequate explanation for denying a 2020 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to impose protective measures for the species that live Florida, the Caribbean, and the Indo-Pacific region and are threatened by the impacts of climate change.

“Even under [a] highly deferential standard of review, two facets of NMFS’ denial letter fall short,” Smith wrote. “NMFS offered no reasoned explanation for declining to protect the threatened coral species from their gravest threat, climate change. And for one set of the threatened species, the Caribbean corals, NMFS offered no reasoned explanation for declining to adopt regulations addressing localized threats.”

Read the full article at E&E News

Projects in the Field: Saving money and time with an EM Pilot Program in the U.S. sea scallop fishery

March 8, 2025 — Reprinted with permission of EM4Fish:

A project led by the Coonamessett Farm Foundation (CFF) and Saltwater, Inc (SWI). is testing the feasibility of voluntary, cost-shared electronic monitoring (EM) on six commercial sea scallop fishing vessels in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Turbulent outlook for the fishery

After ranking among the most economically important fisheries in the United States (U.S.) over the last decade, accounting for more than $480 million of commercial landings in 2022 alone, the Atlantic sea scallop fishery is bracing for a few challenging years ahead. The total exploitable biomass of sea scallops appears to be on a downward trend, with climate change threatening the long-term health of the population. The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) estimated annual projected landings for the 2025 fishing year to generate only about $348.3 million (19.8 million pounds) in landings, a 28% reduction from 2024.

As the fishery looks for novel cost-cutting measures to weather the coming reductions in catch, the Industry-Funded Scallop (IFS) Program sticks out as large annual expenditure for all fishermen. Observers for the sea scallop fishery are managed though the IFS. In this program, vessels selected to carry an observer must pay for that coverage, equal to ~$800 each day of the trip. Although, the IFS sets aside 1% of the annual catch limit that is redistributed back to vessels to partially offset their costs for carrying an observer. In 2025, this 1% set aside would amount to about $3.5 million in landings.

In addition to observer costs, another systematic inefficiency associated with current sea scallop fishing management is the days-at-sea (DAS) calculation methodology. Currently it is not possible to determine whether a vessel is fishing or transiting from the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) alone, days-at-sea are currently calculated by transit time after a vessel crosses the VMS Demarcation Line, which runs parallel to the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine, and notifies the Coast Guard of its fishing activity. As a result of this rule, vessels that depart from ports closer to productive fishing regions are at an advantage. For example, a sea scallop vessel based in New Bedford, MA planning to fish on Georges Bank in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean could transit along an efficient, straight pathway. Whereas a vessel departing from Cape May, NJ might elect to transit along the U.S. coast to Nantucket before darting out of the VMS Demarcation Line to fish the same area.

By hugging the coast, vessels departing from the Mid-Atlantic consume more fuel and waste time. Furthermore, these vessels are not permitted to transit over several closed rotational sea scallop access areas, which further restricts their trajectories. If DAS could be determined based on the exact time a sea scallop dredge enters the water for the first time during a trip, individual vessels could save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a season, while spending fewer consecutive days away from their families.

Read the full article at EM4Fish

Federal judge sides with environmentalists to protect Gulf corals

March 8, 2025 — A federal judge in Hawaii ruled Thursday that the National Marine Fisheries Service had wrongly denied climate change protections to 20 threatened coral species in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, even though the service had previously identified climate change as the main threat to these corals’ survival.

U.S. District Judge Micah Smith granted partial summary judgement to the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned for the corals’ protection in 2020 and sued the service in 2023 for regulations to address climate change, a ban on international trade, and protections against local threats like development and poor water quality.

“I’m delighted by this court ruling because it underlines climate change’s overwhelming threat to imperiled corals,” said Emily Jeffers, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve lost half of the world’s coral reefs in the past 40 years, and if we don’t act quickly the rest could disappear forever by the end of this century.”

Smith determined that the service failed to explain properly why it wouldn’t protect corals from climate change.

The agency had claimed such regulations would have “limited effectiveness,” but Smith found this explanation inadequate, especially since climate change poses the greatest threat to these species. The court labeled this decision “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered the agency to reconsider.

“In reaching this conclusion, it is worth noting what NMFS did not say. NMFS did not conclude that it lacked the legal authority to adopt Section 4(d) regulations to address climate change. Nor did it say that it was unaware of what Section 4(d) regulations it might adopt to accomplish those ends, or that the center’s petition suffered from a lack of clarity,” Smith wrote.

The judge similarly overturned the service’s decision not to issue regulations protecting Caribbean coral species from local threats, finding that the agency also provided no proper justification for this choice.

Read the full article Court House News Service

Climate change is bringing different fish to New England — but can fishermen keep up?

March 5, 2025 — Climate change is warming the oceans off the New England coast and bringing new species of fish. This could bring new opportunities for fishermen. But fishermen and regulators are falling behind.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

 

The waters off the New England coast are warmer because of climate change. That has brought in new fish and the potential for new opportunities for fishermen. But climate change is happening so fast that fishermen and regulators are falling behind. WBUR’s Barbara Moran has more.

 

BARBARA MORAN, BYLINE: The fishing boat Paladin is off the coast of Nantucket. And on the deck, the flounder are flopping.

 

(SOUNDBITE OF FISH FLOPPING)

 

MORAN: Fisherman Bill Amaru casts a line off the side, reels in another one and shows it off.

 

BILL AMARU: Yeah, that’s a nice fish.

 

MORAN: Yeah. How big is that?

 

AMARU: I’d say, it’ll just be your borderline large, probably about two pounds.

 

MORAN: Amaru has worked as a commercial fisherman for more than 50 years. And this part of the Atlantic Ocean is a lot warmer than when he started out. Sometimes, even fish from the tropics show up, like tarpon or sailfish.

 

AMARU: Nothing is weird anymore out here. Tropical is getting to be fairly common, but I think what we’re losing is way, way in excess of what we’re gaining.

 

MORAN: What scientists say New England is losing are iconic species like cod and lobster. They’ve shifted north or moved to deeper parts of the ocean in search of colder water.

Read the full transcript at NPR

 

Experts and Lawmakers Sound Alarms Over Impacts of NOAA Cuts on Fisheries

March 4, 2025 — After several hundred employees were fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week as part of DOGE’s workforce cuts, reporting has focused on how those cuts might threaten critical weather modeling and systems that help predict and warn the public about severe weather events such as hurricanes and tsunamis.

In response to a question asking for more details on the staff cuts, a NOAA spokesperson told Civil Eats that “per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.” But reports suggest staff cuts have happened across all six offices within NOAA, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

Read the full article at Civil Eats

US lobster catch drops as crustaceans migrate to colder Canadian waters

March 3, 2025 — The US lobster industry’s catch keeps sliding as fishermen contend with the northward migration of the valuable crustaceans.

The industry is based mostly in Maine, where lobsters are both a cultural signifier and the backbone of the coastal economy. The state’s haul of lobsters has declined every year from 2021, when it was nearly 111 million pounds, to 2023, when it was less than 97 million pounds.

That decline extended into 2024, when the haul was about 86.1 million pounds, according to data released by state regulators on Friday. That is the lowest figure in 15 years. A series of major storms that damaged waterfront communities and disrupted fisheries was a key factor in the reduced catch, officials said.

Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, praised the industry for its perseverance.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Rising Temperatures Are Scrambling the Base of the Ocean Food Web

March 3, 2025 — Humans are living in a plankton world. These minuscule organisms are spread across the oceans, covering nearly three-quarters of the planet, and are among the most abundant forms of life on Earth.

But a warming world is throwing plankton into disarray and threatening the entire marine food chain that is built on them.

A year ago, NASA launched a satellite that provided the most detailed view yet of the diversity and distribution of phytoplankton. Its insights should help scientists understand the changing dynamics of life in the ocean.

“Do you like breathing? Do you like eating? If your answer is yes for either of them, then you care about phytoplankton,” said Jeremy Werdell, the lead scientist for the satellite program, called PACE, which stands for “Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem.”

Historically, research from ships has captured limited snapshots in time, offering only glimpses of the ever-changing oceans. The advent of satellites gave a fuller picture, but one still limited, like looking through glasses with a green filter.

“You know it’s a garden, you know it’s pretty, you know it’s plants, but you don’t know which plants,” explained Ivona Cetinic, a NASA oceanographer. The PACE satellite effectively removes the filter and finally reveals all the colors of the garden, she said. “It’s like seeing all the flowers of the ocean.”

These flowers are phytoplankton, tiny aquatic algae and bacteria that photosynthesize to live directly off energy from the sun. They are eaten by zooplankton, the smallest animals of the ocean, which, in turn, feed fish and larger creatures.

It may seem implausible that a satellite orbiting high above the planet’s surface could make out microscopic organisms. But different phytoplankton have unique ways of scattering and absorbing light. PACE measures the whole spectrum of visible color and slightly beyond, from ultraviolet to near infrared, allowing scientists to identify different kinds of phytoplankton. Older satellites measured limited colors and could only reveal how much phytoplankton was underneath them, not what kind.

Phytoplankton form the foundation of the marine food chain, and climate change is shaking that foundation.

Read the full article at the Pulitzer Center