Commercial fisheries landings up, but remain below recent average.
A massive marine heatwave warmed the eastern Pacific Ocean through much of 2025, but the wind-driven upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that drives the rich marine productivity of the West Coast kept the ecosystem healthy.
That is the conclusion of the California Current Ecosystem Status Report, an annual assessment of the West Coast marine ecosystem by NOAA’s California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment team. The report provides ecological insight for the Pacific Fishery Management Council and others on the ecological, social, and economic factors likely to influence fisheries and other ocean uses in the coming year.
The report assesses conditions and trends over the last year for insight on coming seasons. The leading takeaways from the annual report include:
- Strong upwelling fostered productive waters and held heatwave warmth offshore
- Deep-water nutrients likely fostered toxic algae as it mixed with warm surface water
- Juvenile salmon, young rockfish and anchovy flourished in productive conditions
- Shrimp-like krill, which often reflect the health of the ecosystem, proved abundant coastwide
- Precipitation on land reduced drought conditions but sparse snowpack reduced water storage
- Four coastal fish processors closed as total coastwide landings remain low
This year’s report also highlights new technology, ocean forecasts, and collaborations with vessel operators that provide fishing fleets and managers with timely ecosystem insight that helps support sustainable fisheries. It includes projections that many marine species will move farther offshore and into deeper waters as the ocean warms, which could affect fishing fleets and their communities on the West Coast.
Researchers from the NOAA Fisheries Northwest and Southwest Fisheries Science Centers presented the findings to the Council this week. They said abundant forage such as krill, juvenile rockfish, and anchovy helped boost species including salmon, squid, seabirds, and more.
“Warming continues to be an inescapable reality off the West Coast, but upwelling saved the day,” said Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at the NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center and an editor of the annual ecosystem reports. “The cold water influx helped hold off the marine heatwave and sustained many of the fisheries and species the California Current is known for.”
Commercial Landings, Revenue Increased
Increased landings of Pacific whiting (also known as hake), other groundfish, and market squid helped increase overall commercial fisheries landings on the West Coast in 2025. They were about 25 percent higher than 2024, which had the lowest total landings since the 1980s. However, declines in catch of crab, salmon, and coastal pelagic finfish kept the total landings below average for the last 5 years. Whiting and market squid helped increase commercial fisheries revenue about 6 percent over the previous year.
Upwelling was strong through most of 2025 and included several unusual pulses of the nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean in January and February. This may have helped drive the large harmful algal bloom that developed shortly afterwards in early 2025. The bloom poisoned record numbers of marine life, including hundreds of California sea lions and dolphins.
The algal bloom also limited fishing for Dungeness crab, since shellfish can concentrate the toxin. West Coast states also further restricted the crab fishery to help reduce the risk that humpback whales will become entangled in lines from crab traps.
Positive Signs for Salmon
Abundant anchovy and juvenile rockfishes reflected productive conditions, also providing prey for top predators including salmon, whales, and other marine mammals. Juvenile salmon, groundfish and krill proved more numerous in the northern reaches of the California Current Ecosystem off Oregon and Washington. However, the signals for adult salmon returns are mixed and suggest near-normal returns to the Columbia River.
Low salmon returns to California rivers closed most recreational and commercial salmon fishing off California in the last 3 years. However, the ecosystem report held some promising news for juvenile salmon survival and some stocks, such as coho salmon on the Oregon Coast.
Surveys of coastal waters found high numbers of juvenile salmon, with the most coho and chum salmon on record. That is a positive sign that many young salmon survived their first crucial months in the ocean, boosting their odds of returning to rivers as adults. Many salmon return to their home rivers after 2 years in the ocean. Models that incorporate ocean conditions suggest higher returns for Columbia River salmon that went to the ocean in 2025 and will return in 2027, compared to the previous year’s run.
Seabird colonies along the West Coast largely recovered in 2025 from low productivity, further signaling productive conditions and prey populations.
The report includes several appendices that discuss advances in research and technology that can help fisheries managers understand how ecosystem changes play out for fisheries and the communities that depend on them. Recent research drew on automated tracking data from fishing vessels to discern how albacore shifted in response to a marine heatwave.
Fishing vessels with diversified fisheries that include multiple species often have more stable income. But diversification declined in 2024 and 2025 for vessels fishing along the West Coast and Alaska to the lowest observed level since 1991. Since 2024, major fish processing facilities have closed in Puget Sound, Washington; Newport, Oregon; and Crescent City and Eureka, California. That contributed to fewer commercial fisheries in Northern California and Newport, Oregon, while Astoria, Oregon, and Bodega Bay, California, saw increases in the number of fisheries.
“Significant processor closures in Oregon and Northern California impacted commercial fishing communities including an overall reduction of groundfish fisheries participation in Newport,” the report said. “Ports with processor closures also saw an overall decline in connectivity between fisheries, potentially reducing resilience to environmental or regulatory shocks.”
