Saving Seafood

Less than a year into the ban, is NOAA’s MMPA comparability finding having the intended impact?

August 25, 2026 — On January 1st, 2026, NOAA Fisheries implemented new import prohibitions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), banning seafood imports that failed a comparability finding. According to the findings, 240 fisheries from 46 countries failed to adequately protect marine mammals and were subsequently blocked from exporting their products to the U.S. Eight months later, this policy is noticeably affecting companies that produce the now-banned products. But the impact on the water is more difficult to measure and may not be going as NOAA intended.

I purchase seafood for a U.S.-based importing company that specializes in sushi ingredients. We recently visited a yellowfin tuna first receiver and processor near Tuy Hòa, Vietnam, and asked how operations have changed since the import ban on January 1st. This company processes yellowfin tuna for raw consumption, exporting “sashimi-grade” products to Europe, Japan, China, and its largest market, the U.S. Some of the raw material is handline-caught from a nearby fishery improvement project. This fishing method met the comparability study standards and has not been banned. But when handline fishing is slow, as it has been in recent years, fishers deploy gillnets to boost their catch. NOAA’s comparability findings determined that yellowfin tuna caught using gillnets do not meet MMPA standards and therefore can no longer be imported when caught in Vietnamese fisheries.

Read the full article at Sustainable Fisheries UW

Court order could threaten permits for surviving US wind projects

August 19, 2026 — A court decision remanding prior approvals for a wind energy project off New Jersey could pose a new threat to offshore turbine arrays under construction, as the Trump administration presses its relentless campaign against them.

The Aug. 10 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in the District of Columbia granted a request by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to reconsider its permitting for  Atlantic Shores, planned as a 2.8 gigawatt project near Long Beach Island, N.J.

Local activist group Save Long Beach Island had sought a remand and reconsideration of the project’s construction and operations plan, approved in October 2024 in the waning days of the Biden administration.

Save LBI contended that BOEM failed to adequately consider the project’s likely effects under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, among other federal laws.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

NOAA Fisheries highlights challenges in applying MMPA to foreign fisheries, seeks suggestions

July 30, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries recently said a law requiring it to ban imports from foreign fisheries that don’t align with U.S. marine mammal protections has been a useful tool in reducing bycatch but admitted it is very difficult to execute.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) has long required U.S. commercial fishers to take steps to reduce marine mammal bycatch, but a similar requirement to ban imports from foreign fisheries that do not take action to reduce marine mammal bycatch has not been consistently enforced. Amid growing pressure from conservation groups, in 2016, NOAA Fisheries finalized a rule laying out how it would assess those foreign fisheries. Under the rule, NOAA Fisheries would conduct a comparability finding for every single foreign fishery to ensure it met U.S. standards for protecting marine mammals and reducing bycatch. Those denied a comparability finding would be banned from exporting their products to U.S. markets.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Can killing seals save salmon? Conservationists and Washington lawmakers disagree

July 23, 2026 — A marine wildlife hospital based in the Pacific Northwest is worried about an alarming trend: seals coming to them alive, but gravely injured.

Earlier this month, the organization treated its third seal in less than a year with a gunshot wound. That seal pup, named Waffles, was found over Fourth of July weekend. It had to be euthanized once it was determined its injuries were too severe.

“It’s not uncommon for us to see animals that have been shot,” said Casey Mclean, executive director and veterinary nurse at SR3 SeaLife Response + Rehab + Research. “Historically, we often found those animals dead. Now we’re starting to see more of them alive and suffering from gunshot injuries.”This trend, Mclean believes, is being fueled by misinformation about the role marine mammals play in Washington’s continually struggling salmon populations.

Her concern is amplified by a congressional bipartisan bill from two Washington lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Republican, and U.S. Rep. Emily Randall, a Democrat. The Northwest Endangered Salmon Predation Prevention Act (H.R. 9621) would expand the ability of federal, state, and tribal authorities to remove seals and sea lions, known collectively as pinnipeds, from Washington waters in an effort to boost salmon recovery.

In statements to KING 5, both sponsors of the bill lambasted the shooting of the seal pup as illegal, but insisted it should not be confused with what they’re proposing.

“Joe Schmo or any person off the streets shouldn’t be shooting seals or sea lions,” Randall said. “What we have proposed is a robust process to figure out how we can have responsible management of a population that’s decimating our salmon.”

“No one should be illegally poaching sea lions,” Baumgartner said. “I hope the perpetrator is identified and brought to justice. This does not have anything to do with my bipartisan bill to try to save and restore our endangered salmon populations.”

Supporters of the proposal, like the representatives, argue reducing pinnipeds could help struggling salmon populations. However, critics like Mclean say the bill ignores more significant threats to salmon and risks repeating decades-old mistakes in wildlife management.

Read the full article at KUOW

NOAA lifts crab import bans from key countries following Eastern Shore seafood industry pushback

May 12, 2026 — A federal seafood dispute that Eastern Shore seafood companies warned could devastate crab supply chains has now taken a new turn Monday, with federal regulators officially allowing imports from certain countries to continue.

As WBOC previously reported, local seafood companies including Salisbury-based Handy Seafood, Cebu Pacific LLC, and Byrd International joined a federal lawsuit late last year challenging new restrictions tied to the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. The companies argued the rules threatened jobs, production, and the nation’s crab supply because much of the pasteurized crab meat sold in the United States comes from Southeast Asia.

Read the full article at WBOC

Environmental groups’ excessive court challenges are about raising funds, not protecting fisheries

January 2, 2025 — When you think of environmental groups working to protect iconic wildlife the mind’s eye often provides a romantic setting with activists defending dolphins on the high seas.

In reality, the bulk of that work is done in places like Charlotte, where millions of dollars are raised in boardrooms with those very images as the centerpiece. The story behind the story is that such campaigns may be much more about money than marine mammals.

In 2024 the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), forcing the government to implement a portion of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA.) Now they have rushed back to the court that oversaw their original settlement, ostensibly to complain about separate MMPA litigation.

Having pressured NOAA, after more than a decade of delays, into applying the protective policy, they now object to a different court settlement that allows a small handful of crab fisheries in four countries an additional 180 days to come into compliance with the rule.

Read the full article at the Charlotte Observer

 

Leveling the playing field for domestic and imported seafood

December 11, 2025 — In early September, NOAA Fisheries released lists of countries that complied with Marine Mammal Protection Act rules comparable to those that domestic fishermen are held to, and those that did not. Beginning on January 1, 2026, countries that did not make the cut will not be allowed to export some or all of their fisheries’ products to the U.S.

While the ban will affect many products, the big item of contention is crab, and on October 10, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) announced that it, along with many crab processors, is suing NOAA to prevent the agency from stopping imports, particularly crab imports. The NFI and others claim that if they cannot get pasteurized crab from some of the countries on NOAA Fisheries’ List 2: Nations denied comparability findings for some fisheries or List 3: Nations denied comparability findings for all fisheries, then U.S. restaurants and markets will run out of crab cakes.

According to Tara Foreman, manager of her family’s crab picking business, Captain Neill’s Seafood, in Columbia, North Carolina, the market for fresh crab landed by U.S. fishermen won’t be affected if crab from places like the Philippines and Sri Lanka are blocked. “It’s Venezuela that will affect us,” says Foreman. “Because they’re so close, they export fresh crab to our market, and they’re going to be hitting it hard in the next couple of months. They just reopened their season and started fishing again, and they will try to get as much crab into the US as they can before these rules go into effect on January 1st.”

Foreman notes that as a result of Venezuelan crab pouring in, prices to U.S. fishermen will likely go down before they go up. But she notes that her markets are nervous and calling to confirm that they will be able to get crab. “They want to make sure of their supply,” she says. Foreman notes that Venezuela did not apply to NOAA for a comparability finding.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Congress tackles growing sea lion population in Columbia River

December 8, 2025 — The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources took on the Columbia River’s salmon-eating sea lion problem in a nearly 2½-hour hearing Wednesday.

After establishing the scale of the sea lion population explosion around the Pacific Northwest, the meeting looked at the effectiveness of legislative efforts to address the problem — mostly centering around killing them.

The killings had largely faded from controversy as other proposed solutions to salmon extinction have floundered, leaving sea lions as an obvious target. That culminated earlier this year when the federal permit that allows Northwest states and some Native nations to trap and kill sea lions in the Columbia River was reapproved without almost any opposition.

The reapproved permit allowed hundreds of sea lions that weren’t killed under a 2020 approval to be killed by 2030. During the hearing, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, questioned why more of the 716 that were initially approved to be killed had not been.

Read the full article at The Columbian

US Congress holds hearing on sea lion removals and salmon predation

December 4, 2025 — The U.S. House Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee held a hearing on sea lion predation on salmon and the effectiveness of killing the mammals to slow down the trend.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), sea lions skyrocketed from a population of roughly 10,000 in the 1950s to 250,000 today. That spike has been seen as a success story for the MMPA, but it’s also had a major impact on salmon populations, which are a key food source for pinnipeds. By traveling upriver to avoid their natural predators – orcas – sea lions are able to feast on already struggling salmon populations. Since 2002, California and Steller sea lions have eaten roughly 98,000 salmon at just two sites: Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls, Oregon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NFI, NOAA settle lawsuit over MMPA import restrictions; agency stays import ban of swimming crab

November 3, 2025 — The National Fisheries Institute and several seafood companies have settled their lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over its recent determinations on Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) requirements.

NFI sued NMFS in early October over the agency’s decision to find most blue crab fisheries in major countries did not meet MMPA equivalency standards, a requirement for any country looking to export seafood products to the U.S. NMFS found 240 foreign fisheries did not comply with the regulations, which meant as of 1 January, 2026 products from those fisheries would be banned from entering the U.S. market.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource