Saving Seafood

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

 

Petition urges more protections for whales in Dungeness crab fisheries

December 18, 2025 — Four conservation groups have petitioned the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to strengthen risk reduction measures to prevent whale entanglement during the state’s Dungeness crab fishery.

The petition filed on Dec. 11 in Salem, Oregon, also calls for creating a pathway for authorization of safer pop-up fishing gear and establishing a process for timely public reporting of marine mammal or sea turtle entanglements in Oregon Commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear.

Four humpback whales were confirmed to have been entangled in 2025 in Oregon commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear, including one that beached and had to be euthanized.

Petition signers included the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the American Cetacean Society. 

“If state officials don’t move to adopt whale-safe fishing gear, like pop-up buoys for Dungeness crab pots, endangered whales will continue to suffer and die preventable deaths,” said Ben Grundy, an oceans campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Petition urges more protections for whales in Dungeness crab fisheries

December 17, 2025 — Four conservation groups have petitioned the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to strengthen risk reduction measures to prevent whale entanglement during the state’s Dungeness crab fishery.

The petition filed on Dec. 11 in Salem, Oregon, also calls for creating a pathway for authorization of safer pop-up fishing gear and establishing a process for timely public reporting of marine mammal or sea turtle entanglements in Oregon Commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear.

Four humpback whales were confirmed to have been entangled in 2025 in Oregon commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear, including one that beached and had to be euthanized.

Petition signers included the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the American Cetacean Society. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US government signs agreement ending lawsuit over marine mammal protections in foreign fisheries

January 21, 2025 — The U.S. government has signed a legal agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Animal Welfare Institute demanding regulators block imports from foreign fisheries that are not adequately protecting marine mammals.

“I’m relieved other nations will finally be pressured to prevent whales and dolphins from getting caught in fishing nets. Entanglement is a huge threat to these animals’ survival,” CBD International Program Director Sarah Uhlemann said in a statement. “The United States has the power to use its enormous seafood market to help the world’s oceans, and it’s about time we started.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Conservation groups call on US to ban foreign seafood over whale and dolphin bycatch

December 8, 2023 — Conservation groups want NOAA Fisheries to ban imports from foreign fisheries that are not adequately working to prevent marine mammal bycatch.

“By continuing to allow imports that do not meet U.S. standards, [NOAA Fisheries] NMFS chooses business as usual over the survival of some of the most amazing species on the planet,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Attorney and Global Biodiversity Conservation Director Zak Smith said. “Because NMFS has failed to safeguard ocean biodiversity, future generations may never have the chance to protect invaluable marine life.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

New England wind farm, environmentalists agree on ways to protect whales

June 27, 2022 — The developers of an offshore wind farm and three environmental organizations announced Monday that they have reached an agreement to further protect rare North Atlantic right whales during construction and operation of the energy-generating project.

The agreement involving Orsted and Eversource — developers of South Fork Wind off the coast of New England and New York — was signed by the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Conservation Law Foundation, the groups said in a joint statement.

The agreement promotes the development of sustainable energy while protecting wildlife, said Alison Chase, a senior policy analyst at the NRDC.

“We don’t need to choose between clean energy development and wildlife protection, and this agreement shows how we can do both,” she said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

US Representative Jared Huffman files bill to reauthorize Magnuson-Stevens Act

July 26, 2021 — U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) announced on Monday 26 July, 2021, that he introduced a reauthorization bill for the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal law that oversees fishery management in the United States.

In a statement, Huffman said it’s time for a new reauthorization of the landmark legislation because of changes within the industry and the challenges it faces.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Dire drought warning: California says ‘nearly all’ salmon could die in Sacramento River

July 9, 2021 — The drought is making the Sacramento River so hot that “nearly all” of an endangered salmon species’ juveniles could be cooked to death this fall, California officials warned this week.

In a brief update on the perilous state of the river issued this week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made a dire prediction about the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and its struggles against consistently hot weather in the Sacramento Valley.

“This persistent heat dome over the West Coast will likely result in earlier loss of ability to provide cool water and subsequently it is possible that nearly all in-river juveniles will not survive this season,” the department said.

Given that the salmon generally have a three-year life cycle, a near-total wipeout of one year’s run of juveniles “greatly increases the risk of extinction for the species,” said Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The winter-run salmon endured two years of severe mortality during the last drought as well.

Read the full story at The Sacramento Bee

Ship speed limit sought to protect endangered whales in Gulf

May 12, 2021 — A speed limit for ships in part of the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle is needed to protect the few remaining endangered whales there, environmental groups said Tuesday.

The groups asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service to set a 10-knot (11.5 mph, 18.5 kph) speed limit in an area covering about 11,500 square miles (30,000 square kilometers) off Florida and Alabama.

Shipping interests did not immediately answer requests for comment on the petition, which also asks NOAA Fisheries to make all shipping detour around the whales’ core habitat at night.

The federal agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation, spokeswoman Allison Garrett said.

“One of the rarest, most endangered whales on the planet is in our backyard, and we have a responsibility to save it,” said Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups.

Read the full story at The Star Tribune

Supreme Court won’t hear fishermen case against ocean monument

March 23, 2021 — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a fishing group that challenged the creation of a large federally protected area in the Atlantic Ocean.

The group sued to try to get rid of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which became the first national ocean monument in the Atlantic when President Barack Obama created it in 2016. The area consists of 5,000 square miles off New England, and it is home to fragile deep-sea corals.

The fishermen sued in federal court saying the establishment of a protected zone where they have historically fished for lobsters and crabs could hurt their livelihoods. Federal district and appellate courts ruled that the monument was created appropriately by Obama, who used the Antiquities Act to establish it.

The high court denied a request to take a look at the case. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the creation of a national monument was “of no small consequence,” but the petitioners did not meet the criteria to bring it before the Supreme Court.

Roberts also wrote that the court has never considered how such a large monument can be justified under the Antiquities Act, which President Theodore Roosevelt created more than a century ago to preserve artifacts such as Native American ruins. Roberts wrote it’s possible the court could be presented a better opportunity to consider that issue in the future.

Read the full story at the Associated Press