Nathan Strout is a Portland, Maine-based associate editor of SeafoodSource. Previously, Nathan covered the U.S. military’s space activities and emerging technologies at C4ISRNET and Defense News, where he won awards for his reporting on the U.S. Space Force’s missile warning capabilities. Nathan got his start in journalism writing about several communities in Midcoast Maine for a local daily paper, The Times Record.
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The government of the U.S. state of Maryland has vowed to continue its fight against invasive catfish and snakehead in the Chesapeake Bay watershed after NOAA Fisheries denied its request for a federal fishery disaster declaration in December 2023.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore submitted the request in March 2023 as his state has struggled to contain an exploding population of invasive blue catfish, which was first introduced to the bay to create
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U.S President Joe Biden has signed into law a clarification of the Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) that will ensure projects supporting commercial fishing operations can access funding under that program.
The PIDP is a federal program that provides grants to port authorities, states, and local governments for port-related infrastructure projects; however, vague language left it unclear whether PIDP grants could be awarded to
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U.S. senators are lining up behind legislation that would exempt seafood processors from the nation’s annual cap on H-2B temporary worker visas.
The seafood processing sector depends on foreign workers to meet seasonal demands. The Maryland crab industry, for example, brings in 500 workers annually via the H-2B program during the crab season.
“For years, the struggle to hire seasonal workers has put an incredible strain on
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Several U.S. senators want to be able to track fishery disaster determinations the same way consumers track packages throughout their shipping process.
The Republican lawmakers are demanding more transparency from NOAA Fisheries on how the agency makes determinations of fishery disasters – a designation that makes communities and industries eligible for federal financial relief.
In a 21 December 2023 joint letter to NOAA Assistant
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U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) has introduced legislation that would provide an additional USD 36 million (EUR 33 million) for audits of imported shrimp and red snapper under the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP).
“Big seafood exporters, such as India and Ecuador, are flooding America’s markets with illegal shrimp and selling it for cheaper than quality Gulf shrimp caught right here at home,” Kennedy said.
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The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled an environmental justice strategy focused on communities dependent on the ocean or marine resources during the United Nations’ Conference of Parties in December 2023.
The federal strategy outlines overarching goals for advancing environmental justice for communities relying “on the ocean and Great Lakes for economic, cultural, spiritual, recreational, and food security
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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
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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
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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
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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
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