Commercial fishing safety doesn’t begin and end on the water. Behind the lifejackets, safety training, and emergency gear is often a fishing community organization coordinating distribution, building trust, and reaching vessels that outside entities can’t. This panel brings together leaders from West Coast fishing family organizations alongside researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Washington to share results from many years of collaboration. 

Over the past decade, partnerships between these groups have produced concrete results for West Coast fishermen and their families. Among them: A lifejacket distribution program in Oregon led to documented behavior changes among three-quarters of recipients, a regional first aid and safety training initiative that grew into a national community of practice, and ongoing research building the evidence base for expanding community health navigation services across Oregon and Washington.  

The organizations on this panel collectively raise tens of thousands of dollars annually in community funding, and their trust with working fishermen is a resource that cannot be manufactured from the outside. This session highlights that work and what it means for the future of fishing community safety on the West Coast. 

Food safety in seafood is often treated as a processing plant problem — but it starts long before the fish reaches the dock. The decisions made on deck, from how a catch is handled to how cold chain integrity is maintained, directly affect product quality and market access. This session reframes food safety not as a compliance burden but as a values-driven culture that, when built intentionally, becomes a driver of operational excellence, workforce engagement, and long-term sustainability. 

Drawing on real-world experience in Pacific Coast and Alaska fisheries, speakers will explore what food safety culture looks like in highly seasonal, decentralized harvesting operations and how it can be embedded without adding unnecessary cost. The conversation will address the human side of seafood safety, including seasonal labor, crew turnover, and language barriers. 

When a fishery disaster strikes, federal assistance can take years to arrive — long after fishing communities have already absorbed the damage. Agriculture has had a better answer for decades: crop insurance that can distribute payouts in weeks or even days. Commercial fishing businesses have been left out of those systems, but change is on the horizon.  

Industry organizations have been working closely with the new USDA Office of Seafood to design a more responsive safety net, and this session brings together leaders engaged in that effort. 

For too long, wild capture fisheries have been treated as a commodity rather than a cornerstone of the domestic food system, a disconnect that has kept seafood harvesters on the outside of federal programs widely available to farmers, ranchers, and other segments of the U.S. food system. Now, that’s starting to change. 

New federal initiatives are starting to open doors for fishermen and seafood businesses to access to grants, loans, and technical assistance that the agriculture sector has long relied on. This session brings together policymakers, industry representatives, and Tribal leaders to discuss the changes being proposed, what they mean in practice, and what gaps still need to be addressed.

The West Coast seafood industry is facing growing workforce challenges – fewer new entrants, an aging fleet, rising barriers to entry, gaps in infrastructure, and changes in marketing strategies. These issues are felt locally but often shared across Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California.  

This panel brings together an alliance of West Coast Sea Grant experts with decades of experience serving the industry from a bottom-up, non-advocacy standpoint to examine regional trends, explore what it takes to rebuild and sustain the seafood workforce, and discuss what the future of West Coast seafood looks like. 

The conversation will be grounded in real-world experience and is designed for those actively navigating workforce issues on the water, in processing, and across coastal economies. Panelists will share proven examples of training and mentorship models, business and marketing support, and collaborative approaches that have worked and can provide a foundation for future efforts.