Sea Grant Success Stories

Fisheries Extension


Sea Grant training in Seafood Safety


Sea Grant delivered training courses enabling more than 15,000 individuals in industry to comply with the nation’s first mandatory food safety regulations based on an innovative training program called Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). Eighty-three percent of American seafood businesses reported that they could not have met federal regulations without these courses. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that food-borne illnesses in the US have been reduced by 23 percent since 1996 through HACCP training courses, thereby saving as much as $115 million annually in economic losses.


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Sea Grant helps in collecting fishery stocks


Very little biological information has been collected on Atlantic halibut stocks (one of the region’s most prized seafood items) in the Gulf of Maine. This information is needed for future fisheries management decisions. Sea Grant staff helped to develop data collection tools and methods, and trained 100 participating fishermen to participate in halibut studies. This effort has led to the formulation of state rules for the fishery.


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Sea Grant research helps in developing regulations to save seabirds


Based on an applied research project by Sea Grant, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council adopted regulations requiring larger longline vessels to deploy seabird bycatch mitigation messures, thus saving the lives of seabirds and preventing a potential closure of the valuable longline fishery.