Oregon commercial crabbers will begin trialing ropeless fishing gear next spring under new rules aimed at reducing deadly whale entanglements in the state's Dungeness crab fishery. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted rules giving the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) authority to issue experimental permits for the gear as early as spring 2027. The commission also approved a separate requirement that crabbers install vessel monitoring systems so regulators can track...

Small reductions to trap limits probably won't move the needle — but when the season runs might, according to new federal research on lobster fisheries in Nova Scotia and southern New Brunswick. A new study from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is giving harvesters and managers a clearer picture of which tools actually work when it comes to protecting lobster stocks — and which ones sound good on paper but don't do much in the water. The bottom line: season length is one of the most...

A cruise ship arrived at a dock in Seward, Alaska, on June 19 with a dead fin whale lodged on its bulbous bow, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Alaska. Fin whales are listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The whale, a 61-foot adult female, was discovered on the vessel upon its arrival at port. A local company towed the animal to a nearby beach, where a team began preparations for a necropsy — an animal autopsy — to...