Nathan Strout

The Groundfish Forum – a Seattle, Washington, U.S.A-based trade group representing five U.S. trawling companies – has sued NOAA Fisheries over a newly adopted plan to reduce halibut bycatch in Bering Sea and Aleutian Island groundfish fisheries.

In November 2023, NOAA Fisheries finalized a rule potentially lowering the annual halibut catch limit for the Amendment 80 sector – a fleet of 20 groundfish-trawling vessels

UPDATE: This story was originally published in October in SeafoodSource’s Key Buyer 2023 Industry Update – Fall Edition. In November, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a one-year Farm Bill extension that will keep many programs running through September 2024.

U.S. lawmakers are pushing for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to play a much larger role in American seafood production, and they’re using the renewal of the Farm

UPDATE: This story was originally published in October in SeafoodSource’s Key Buyer 2023 Industry Update – Fall Edition. Since then, multiple other communities have declared disasters over shrimp imports, the U.S. Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission have launched investigations into shrimp imports, and domestic trade associations have pushed for new legislation to limit shrimp imports.

On 17 August, the city

NOAA Fisheries wants to modernize the way it collects data on Gulf of Mexico shrimp, and it’s looking for early adopters to test out its new system.

For years, the government relied on an electronic logbook system utilizing a 3G cellular network to collect data, but that ended when the 3G protocol was shut down in 2020. In the years since, the government has required U.S. shrimpers to physically submit memory cards for regulators to pull

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has voted to continue investigating frozen warmwater shrimp imports from Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam to determine whether the U.S. should implement antidumping and countervailing duties.

The commission’s vote comes after a petition from the American Shrimp Processors Association (ASPA) that claims imports from those four countries are materially harming domestic shrimpers. After the

NOAA Fisheries has released more information from its investigation of the death of 10 killer whales off the coast of Alaska, as well as the serious injury of an eleventh whale.

“Given the high level of incidental catches of killer whales in 2023, we knew it was important to move as quickly as possible to better understand whether these incidental takes pose a conservation concern to any of the potentially affected killer whale

NOAA Fisheries has determined a fishery took place in two California salmon fisheries, clearing the path for the fishing industry in those areas to receive financial relief. The U.S. Small Business Administration is also offering low-interest federal disaster loans to businesses affected by the closure.

In April 2023, California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis requested fishery disaster determinations for the Sacramento River Fall chinook

Conservation groups want NOAA Fisheries to ban imports from foreign fisheries that are not adequately working to prevent marine mammal bycatch.

“By continuing to allow imports that do not meet U.S. standards, [NOAA Fisheries] NMFS chooses business as usual over the survival of some of the most amazing species on the planet,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Attorney and Global Biodiversity Conservation Director Zak

U.S. Senator Tom Cotton has introduced legislation that would ban the import of seafood and aquaculture products from China.

“Fishing and aquaculture is yet another industry the Chinese Communist Party is weaponizing for their own gain through blatant abuse and slave labor. This legislation will stop imports of this illicit seafood by imposing real costs on the Chinese government and the companies that aid them,” Cotton said in a