Juvenile salmon encountered a mixed bag of ocean conditions off the West Coast in 2025, based on an annual analysis by NOAA Fisheries and Oregon State University researchers.
A 2022 petition to list Oregon Coast and Northern California Coastal Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act was denied by NOAA Fisheries this week.
Authorization that allows states and tribes to lethally remove hundreds of sea lions from the Columbia and Willamette rivers as a way to reduce predation on salmon and steelhead has been extended for five more years by NOAA Fisheries.
After lifting the stay Sept. 11 on long-running litigation that challenges federal environmental impact statements and biological opinions regarding the impact of operations of Columbia and Snake river federal dams on imperiled salmon and steelhead, a federal judge last week set a court schedule that continues the legal battles.
Plaintiffs in long-running court battles that since 2001 have challenged environmental impact statements and biological opinions regarding the impact of operations of Columbia and Snake river federal dams on imperiled salmon and steelhead are heading back to court, according to a filing by the groups this week in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
NOAA Fisheries agreed in Oregon District Court to complete its long-awaited decisions to list coastal spring Chinook salmon in Washington, Oregon and Northern California under the federal Endangered Species Act.
As happens every summer, cold water from Dworshak Dam on the North Fork Clearwater River in Idaho began being released in late June to help keep the tailwater cooler for migrating salmon and steelhead at Lower Granite Dam downstream on the lower Snake River.
A vitamin deficiency likely killed as many as half of newly hatched fry of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River in 2020 and 2021. These new findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation awarded the Tribe $3.3 million to remove the 55-foot-tall, 425-foot-long Kwoneesum Dam on Wildboy Creek. The dam, which was removed in 2024, blocked upstream salmon and steelhead migration on the creek for almost 60 years.
NOAA has developed a new high-resolution ocean model to understand and predict West Coast ocean changes.
The eastern North Pacific population of gray whales that migrates along the West Coast of the United States has continued to decline, with reproduction remaining very low. Two new Technical Memorandums from NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center report the estimated population size and calf productivity in 2025.
The Trump administration issued a memorandum this week that disrupts Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead recovery by rescinding a 2023 agreement that included the federal government, two states and four Columbia River tribes and funded that effort with nearly $1 billion.
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed a lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. in an effort to speed up NOAA Fisheries’ review of the Washington-based conservation group’s proposal to list Chinook salmon in Alaska under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Due to a drier and warmer than normal April, the water supply forecasts for May-September for the Columbia and Snake river basins have dropped, according to NOAA’s Northwest River Forecast Center’s last water supply briefing of the season held online this month.
Stretches of coasts and their rivers form enormous salmon nurseries for the exploring juveniles, the scientists said. The researchers documented coho salmon, steelhead, and cutthroat trout using coastal rivers separated by salt water, and suspect other species may do the same.
President Donald Trump, in an April proposed rule, has directed the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind the long-standing definition of “harm” to species covered by the federal Endangered Species Act. The existing definition of harm as the ESA is currently written, the Administration says, is contrary to the “best meaning” of the term “take.”
Mixed ocean conditions for Columbia River salmon and steelhead juveniles entering the ocean in 2023 translate to average runs of spring and fall Chinook when they return as adults in 2025, according to information from NOAA Fisheries presented to a changing Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week.
Warmer temperatures with some snowmelt and near- or wetter-than-normal precipitation in much of the Columbia River basin in March led to some early runoff but overall resulted in higher April-Sept. water supply forecasts and a better outlook for stream flows in the basin that will aid juvenile and adult salmon and steelhead migrations this summer, according to a NOAA water supply briefing last week.
West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network partners are reporting upwards of 100 calls a day reporting sea lions and dolphins affected by the algal toxin, domoic acid.
2025 is forming to be the third consecutive year of low Columbia River basin water supplies, with the latest forecast April-September at The Dalles Dam of just 85 percent of the 30-year average, according to a NOAA water supply briefing this week.
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued five cabinet-level agencies seeking to stop the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its DOGE teams from taking further actions against multiple environmental agencies until each team fully complies with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is still determining “how to proceed” in implementing actions directed by the 2024 Water Resources Development Act and a new jeopardy biological opinion for its 13 Willamette River projects completed by NOAA Fisheries Dec. 26. The Corps says that it still needs funds from Congress that it could get…
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced the selection of 15 projects that will receive funding for the restoration, enhancement and protection of salmon and steelhead (anadromous salmonid) habitat in California watersheds.
A drier than normal January is contributing to February’s lower Columbia River basin water supply forecasts for the months ahead.
Western Washington’s Olympic Peninsula summer and winter steelhead were found by NOAA Fisheries in November 2024 to be at moderate risk of extinction, but the federal agency has yet to list the fish as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a new complaint filed Jan. 17 in federal court by The Conservation Angler and the Wild Fish Conservancy.
NOAA Fisheries scientists have completed a 4-month, roughly 4,500-nautical-mile, survey of marine mammals and seabirds off the U.S. West Coast.
Although the snowpack in the western and southern portions of the Columbia River basin are higher than normal, other areas to the north and to the east are near- to lower-than-normal, and, as a result, January water supplies at key dams are being reported as below or slightly below normal.
How did climate change impact ocean waters off the U.S. West Coast this past year? What does that tell us about the growth and survival of juvenile salmon for the years to come?
NOAA Fisheries has completed 5-year status reviews of the recovery progress and prospects of four salmon and steelhead species in Northern California and Southern Oregon and found that all four should remain threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
A NOAA Fisheries biological status review team has determined that the summer and winter Olympic Peninsula steelhead are at moderate risk of extinction, a reversal of the previous status review in the 1990s that had determined the fish were not at risk of becoming threatened or endangered then or in the future.
The number of gray whale calves migrating with their mothers along the California Coast this year was one of the lowest on record.
In a new study, NOAA Fisheries scientists, in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, show that it is possible to estimate fish biomass for more than one species at the same time, using environmental DNA (eDNA).
NOAA Fisheries has awarded more than $9.2 million in grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act to academic partners that will help recover threatened and endangered Pacific salmon.
Threatened Chum salmon are arriving at spawning grounds downstream of Bonneville Dam, prompting the interagency Technical Management Team to begin operations at the dam designed to maintain a certain level of water over the fish as they spawn now and through emergence in April.
When research scientist Gary Longo first saw the results of his genomic analysis of sardines, he thought he must have mixed up his samples.
Offshore wind energy may represent the most significant new commercial use of the ocean seen in many decades. As new offshore wind technology emerges off the U.S. West Coast, NOAA Fisheries has developed a strategic science plan identifying both opportunities and challenges for advancing the agency’s research and understanding of offshore wind in the region.
Tribal, federal, and state leaders gathered at the Tulalip Reservation earlier this month to celebrate $240 million in federal funding for tribal hatcheries. The Inflation Reduction Act investment will help 27 tribes from Northern California to Southeast Alaska meet maintenance and modernization needs of tribal Pacific salmon and steelhead hatcheries.
Commercial troll fishermen in Southeast Alaska may soon be able to again legally fish for Chinook salmon in waters off the Alaskan shore. The SE Alaska troll fleet was facing a near shutdown of fishing after a District Court judge in May remanded NOAA Fisheries’ 2019 biological opinion and incidental take statement for the fishery.
NOAA Fisheries is asking the public to weigh in on alternatives on how to fund a controversial hatchery-driven prey increase program that it says would provide 4- to 5-percent more Chinook salmon in Puget Sound for endangered Orcas.
All four lower Klamath River hydropower dams have been removed. Kiewit, the dam removal contractor hired by the Klamath River Renewal Corporation to complete the construction elements of the project, finished all work this month in the river.
The latest draft annual survival study by the Fish Passage Center confirms what the organization has found each year since 2019, that recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Snake River will not occur without breaching the four lower Snake River dams.
A lawsuit contending that lower Columbia River hatcheries downstream of Bonneville Dam are a threat to wild salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act was settled in part last week.
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