Salmon Season Setting 2025 Finds NMFS ‘In Choppy Waters’

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s lead West Coast administrator tried to address some of what’s on the mind of many as 2025’s salmon seasons begin to be shaped: How is what’s going on back in Washington, DC going to impact setting this year’s fisheries?

With careful words, attempted reassurances and a few nervous laughs, Jennifer Quan briefed the Pacific Fisheries Management Council this morning on implementing White House executive orders, a regulatory freeze that’s been implemented, directives to cut 10 rules for every new rule or guidance put in place, and the loss of NMFS staff last week as well as restrictions on the remaining employees’ work hours.

“We’ve entered this transition … I’ve been characterizing it to my staff as a little bit choppy – we’re in choppy waters. I’ve asked supervisors and others to essentially put their keel in those waters as we navigate them and help build stability,” Quan told the council.

The PFMC process – more commonly known as North of Falcon and South of Falcon – is a pair of intense sprints in an annual March-April marathon that result in tentative ocean fisheries for Chinook and coho in federal waters off Washington, Oregon and California. Other Pacific species are also on the docket.

NMFS is a critical partner in all of it, and final seasons that come out of PFMC are subject to approval by the agency and the Department of Commerce, which it is housed under.

Quan pointed out that NMFS wasn’t in the boat alone and said she took strength from those who are gathered this week at the Vancouver, Washington, Hilton hotel, particularly the tribes and others “who have experienced similar hardships” and yet are still around today, stronger than ever.

While she and her staff did receive words of support from members of the council, commissioners also had questions for her, one of which was, what exactly had she meant by a “regulatory freeze.”

Quan, who came over to NMFS from WDFW in the late 2010s, characterized the freeze as typical for a new administration to institute as it feels its way forward and determines whether standing regulations fit into its priorities or not. In answer to which particular rules are being affected by the freeze, she conferred with staff and pointed to those for salmon, halibut, highly migratory species (think albacore and bluefin tuna) and groundfish.

“The regulatory freeze, I’m hoping and predicting we’ll see a thaw in that moving forward,” Quan said. “I fully understand, we fully understand at the region that there are implications for several rules that are in process right now and for what it means for them not to be moving. And we are, please know, relaying the urgency of moving those on a regular basis.”

She said that as more political appointees join upper echelons at Commerce, her expectation was that things would smooth out. “That’s been our experience with that,” she said.

But while appointees are expected in DC, back on the West Coast, NMFS is going into this year’s season setting suddenly short-handed due to last week’s mass layoffs that included separations and early retirements along with employees in their probationary period.

Quan said her agency was “mourning” the loss of those staffers, and while she couldn’t quantify exactly how many people had lost their jobs and said NMFS was still assessing the impacts, she added that the agency understood the gravity of it and was working to shift and reprioritize resources.

She also told the council that NMFS is essentially on a “travel freeze,” with only “mission-critical and essential” travel being allowed, if approved by headquarters. While staffers can participate virtually in PFMC, she added that NMFS was also back to an in-office five-day workweek.

“And so what that means is that some of the flexibilities that we once had for weekends and evenings are largely nonexistent, and so that means access that you may have had before may only be available during … a regular kind of normal workday. For council processes, understanding that the council process doesn’t follow that exactly, we are currently maximizing flexibilities we have for this meeting, so we are able to bring staff here, but it doesn’t reflect normal posture right now,” Quan said.

She added that guidance on telework is expected from the Department of Commerce in the coming months.

How well Quan eased concerns today and how NMFS fares in weeks and months ahead in finalizing salmon seasons in this “transition” environment remains to be seen.

A source said that in private conversations throughout the day at the Vancouver Hilton, there was considerable hand wringing about what’s already impacting things, what might come next in terms of personnel and funding cuts, and how it all may affect the April PFMC meeting and its tentative decisions on 2025-26 fisheries.

While a US District Court judge in Rhode Island today reportedly slapped a temporary injunction on federal funding freezes, in this hook-and-bullet reporter’s recollection, the only vaguely similar analogy to current events was in 2016. That’s when, after PFMC and ocean salmon fisheries were wrapped up, WDFW and treaty tribes took six more weeks to agree on inside fisheries.

In the end, it didn’t really affect much, but 2025’s edition bears close watching.