Court case could affect seafood imports

First published in Landings, February 2015.

In early January, the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York concluded that the U.S. government must adopt new rules under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to ensure seafood imported into this country meets U.S. standards for protecting whales and dolphins. The ruling will require foreign fisheries to meet the same marine mammal protection standards required of U.S. fishermen or be denied import privileges. The case was brought before the court by the Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The NRDC published a report in January, 2014, called Net Loss: the Killing of Marine Mammals in Foreign Fisheries. The report noted that approximately 91% of the seafood eaten in this country is imported and that “nearly every foreign fish product sold in the United States enters the U.S. market in violation of federal law [the MMPA].” The MMPA requires that all seafood imported into the U.S. meet this country’s standards on bycatch. The Act calls for monitoring bycatch both by a government-managed observer program and by self-reporting from fishing vessels.

The report noted that species such as the endangered vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, is being driven to extinction by shrimp gillnets in Mexico’s Gulf of California. Under the MMPA, shrimp from this region should be barred from entering the U.S. because the fishery does not meet the more protective U.S. protection standards.

The MMPA specifically says that “The Secretary of the Treasury shall ban the importation of commercial fish or products from fish which have been caught with commercial fishing technology which results in the incidental kill or incidental serious injury of ocean mammals in excess of United States standards” and that the Secretary “shall insist on reasonable proof from the government of any nation from which fish or fish products will be exported to the United States of the effects on ocean mammals of the commercial fishing technology in use.” While individual companies have taken measures to ensure that their tuna or other seafood products are “dolphin safe,” this provision of the MMPA has not been uniformly applied to all U.S. seafood imports, argued the three organizations.

Under the January ruling, the federal government must make a final decision by August, 2016, about how to implement this requirement of the MMPA. The proposed rule is expected to be published in June 2015.

What effect the ruling might have on the Maine lobster industry is unclear. Imports of Canadian lobster into the United States remain high. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service “Fisheries of the United States 2013,” the U.S. imported more than 85 million pounds of American lobster from Canada in 2013. Could this ruling affect those imports? “The Maine Department of Marine Resources staff is aware of the settlement and will be watching this issue closely due to potential impacts to the supply chains for all fisheries, but particularly lobster, as well as possible impact to the bait supply,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher commented.