Pacific Archives - Saving Seafood

Climate threat casts a shadow over Calif. commercial fisheries

April 24, 2025 — A new climate vulnerability study paints a sobering picture for California’s fishing industry, highlighting serious threats to the state’s most iconic and economically critical species, including Dungeness crab, red abalone, and Pacific herring.

The study, first reported by NBC Bay Area’s Joe Rosato Jr., resulted from a collaboration between federal and state scientists and researchers from UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis. It evaluated 34 aquatic species for their sensitivity to projected climate change impacts, including warming seas, ocean acidification, and shifting upwelling patterns that drive productivity along the coast.

“The most striking thing that we found is 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 Mikeala Provost, assistant professor of fisheries ecology at UC Davis and a co-author of the study.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

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

Commercial fishing could expand to more marine monuments

April 21, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s order to open a vast national monument in the Pacific Ocean to commercial fishing for the first time in two decades — and indications he could soon do the same to other protected waters — drew fire from environmental advocacy groups that warned the move could decimate fishing stocks.

Trump on Thursday issued an executive order rolling back prohibitions on commercial fishing across 400,000 square miles of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, or more than 80 percent of the sprawling site. The monument is located about 900 miles southwest of Hawaii in the central Pacific Ocean.

He issued a second order, titled “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” that directs the Commerce and Interior departments to conduct a review of all marine national monuments — there are five, including the Pacific Islands Heritage site — and issue recommendations about any additional ones that should allow commercial fishing.

Read the full story at E&E News

CALIFORNIA: ‘Hope dies hard’: Fishing industry reacts to CA salmon season closure

April 21, 2025 — This week, the Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted recommendations for ocean salmon fishing along the West Coast; for an unprecedented third year in a row, the council has recommended closing commercial fishing off the California coast and allowing only limited commercial fishing in Oregon and Washington.

Commercial fishermen and fishing organizations largely affirmed the need to suspend salmon fishing, but noted that three years without a season has been devastating to fishermen and coastal communities that rely on salmon fishing.

Commercial salmon fisherman and Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District Commissioner Aaron Newman said that he had been optimistic after seeing indications that “a lot of healthy jacks” were coming out of the Sacramento region as the Pacific Fishery Management Council planned its recommendation to the National Marine Fisheries Service. But said that analysis of recent trendlines, which take into account the very grim indicator of the past two years, might have scuttled the opportunity for a season.

“Nobody wants to fish on a failing fishery,” Newman said, “but it really looked like it was rebounding.”

Impact on fishermen

“Coastal towns, river communities and thousands of salmon fishery employees depend on the salmon season to generate income and stay afloat — and now, for the third year in a row, they’ve been dealt another devastating impact with an unprecedented closure of the 2025 salmon season,” read a statement issued by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Raphael). “The last two years of closures have devastated California’s coastal economies — and facing a third consecutive closure marks an unprecedented low point.”

Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Executive Director Lisa Damrosch lamented a lack of a safety net.

“We don’t have access to the same resources that other food producers have,” she said, noting that commercial fishermen don’t have access to programs like those provided by the USDA. “We have had disasters declared in the past; 2023 and 2024 were both declared disasters, but that’s a very long and onerous process. There still have been no pay-outs to the fishermen from 2023 … There are other programs for agriculture such as subsidies if there is a bad season or subsidies for low prices or low-interest loans or grants; we don’t have any of that to help our fishermen, food producers, when there’s a disaster or an issue.”

Read the full story at the Times-Standard

California’s commercial salmon fishery to remain closed for a third consecutive year

April 17, 2025 — The U.S. state of California’s commercial salmon fishery will remain closed for a third year in a row due mostly to low abundance fall Chinook runs in both the Klamath River and Sacramento River.

“A third year without fishing is a serious blow to California’s commercial salmon fleet,” Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association President George Bradshaw said in a statement. “We were optimistic about a return to salmon fishing for California’s fleet, but the reality is the low abundance and return estimates will not provide the economic impact we need. The risk of fishing this depleted population is simply not worth the reward.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

California salmon season shuts down for third year in a row

April 17, 2025 — California’s salmon fishery will be closed to commercial fishermen for an unprecedented third year in a row, under a vote Tuesday by fishery managers.

What happened: After an abysmal forecast for this season’s salmon numbers, the Pacific Fishery Management Council approved a proposal Tuesday that would bar commercial fishermen from harvesting salmon due to even lower populations than in 2023 and 2024.

Though the past two seasons have also seen a closure for recreational fishing, this year’s proposal allows a few dayslong windows for sport and recreational anglers under a statewide harvest quota based on a recommendation from NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at E&E News

OREGON: Oregon lawmakers urge Trump administration to declare fishery disaster

April 16, 2025 — A group of Oregon Democratic lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to declare a fishery disaster in the state after a drop in the salmon population.

In an April 11 letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the lawmakers asked the administration to approve Governor Tina Kotek’s disaster declaration request after Oregon’s troll salmon fishery struggled from the worsening effects of climate change in 2024 — from increased drought to shifting ocean conditions and to other impacts leading to poor salmon returns.

Struggling fisheries pose an economic and cultural threat to Oregon, the lawmakers said, noting the state’s commercial fishing industry garners more than $640 million in economic activity every year.

Read the full article at KOIN

Commercial salmon fishing in California will be closed for a third year in a row

April 16, 2025 — The 2025 commercial salmon fishing season in California will be closed for an unprecedented third year running, and sportfishing will be restricted to only a few days due to dwindling numbers of fish, fishing regulators voted Tuesday.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages West Coast fisheries, warned earlier this year there would be limited salmon fishing this year in California, if at all, because of a predicted low number of fall-run Chinook salmon, often known as king salmon, in the Sacramento River.

“This closed commercial and token recreational fishing season is a human tragedy, as well as an economic and environmental disaster,” Scott Artis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association, said in a statement.

Salmon fishing is wildly popular in California but has been off limits for the past two years to commercial and recreational fishing due to dwindling stocks. People who commercially fish blame the issue on a years-earlier drought that walloped waterways, as well as state and federal water management policies they say have made it tough for the species to thrive.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

OREGON: Oregon’s Congressional delegation urges fishery disaster declaration

April 14, 2025 — U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley is leading his Democratic colleagues in the Oregon delegation—Senator Ron Wyden and U.S. Representatives Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Val Hoyle (OR-04), Andrea Salinas (OR-06), Maxine Dexter (OR-03), and Janelle Bynum (OR-05)—in urging the U.S. Department of Commerce to declare a federal fishery resource disaster for the 2024 Oregon troll salmon fishery.

“We write to urge your expeditious approval of Oregon Governor Kotek’s request for a fishery resource disaster declaration under section 312(a) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act for the Oregon troll salmon fishery. This declaration is critical to provide economic relief to Oregon’s fisheries and coastal communities in addition to protecting the sustainability of wild salmon populations,” the lawmakers state in a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce Director.

In 2024, Oregon’s troll salmon fishery struggled amid worsening effects of climate change, increased drought, shifting ocean conditions, and other impacts leading to poor salmon returns, the release states. Facing these significant challenges, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) estimates that 2024 Chinook salmon population levels were below forecasts, with 2025 Chinook salmon populations likely “not high enough to allow for target summer Chinook fisheries.

Read the full article at Cottage Grove Sentinel

Proposed federal cuts jeopardize Pacific salmon habitat restoration, tribal rights

April 14, 2025 — The Trump administration wants to eliminate several programs that benefit Pacific salmon, the iconic but widely threatened species of the Pacific Northwest.

Much of the effort to keep Pacific salmon from disappearing is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

An internal document from the Office of Management and Budget, reviewed by KUOW, calls for eliminating NOAA’s Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, as well as national grant programs for species recovery, interjurisdictional fisheries, and habitat conservation and restoration.

Overall, NOAA would see a 27% cut in its $6 billion budget under the White House proposal, which has not been finalized and is subject to Congressional approval.

In 2023, the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund distributed $107 million to states and tribes, with Washington state receiving $26 million, more than any other recipient. Coastwide, the fund restored 3,624 acres of salmon habitat in 2023 and removed obstacles enabling salmon to reach an additional 202 miles of spawning streams, according to NOAA.

“It’s very troublesome because we just want to get the work done and get our salmon back,” Lummi Nation Councilmember Lisa Wilson said.

Read the full article at OPB

News for the Pacific Region

Impact on fishermen