September 9, 2026 — The National Fisheries Institute (NFI) is planning a rebrand, which will involve changing its name to the National Seafood Association – a first since the organization’s founding,
NFI was founded in 1945, and for over 80 years has been advocating for the U.S. seafood industry. Throughout that time period, the organization’s areas of focus have gradually expanded from just U.S. fisheries to the wider supply chain, including things like aquaculture and processing.
September 8, 2026 — The following is an excerpt from a post, “Bunker Mentality,” by author Charles Witek from his recreational fishing blog One Angler’s Voyage. Mr. Witek is an attorney, fisheries consultant, and recreational fisherman. He has held a seat on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, served as president of the New York State Outdoor Writers Association, and represents New York on various fishery management bodies.
There are legitimate scientific arguments that can be made to reduce overall menhaden landings, including both the landings of the reduction fleet and the landings of the growing segment of the menhaden industry who supply menhaden as bait.
But that’s not the way the menhaden advocates are operating. Instead of focusing on the scientific arguments, they spend most of their efforts in making emotional appeals that revile the reduction fleet, with criticisms based not on hard data, but rather on the size of its vessels or the nationality of its customers.
Consider a group that calls itself “The Forage Fish Campaign.” Its web page declares that
“Industrial fishing vessels are stripping billions of pounds of menhaden, herring, mackerel, shad, and river herring from American coastal waters every year—collapsing ecosystems, destroying livelihoods, and shipping the profits overseas…
“Industrial fishing operations are extracting billions of pounds of menhaden, herring, mackerel, and shad every year from American waters. Not for food. Not for bait. The great majority is for industrial processing—ground into meal and oil, shipped overseas to feed foreign fish farms and factory livestock. [emphasis added]”
It ends with the declaration “This. Stops. Now.”
The message is clearly intended to foment public animosity toward the large-volume, low-value (per-pound) fisheries that typically target forage species, including menhaden. After all, they are “industrial fishing operations,” that ship their profits overseas, and often sell product to foreign fish farms and factory livestock operations.
What red-blooded American wouldn’t despise the sort of folks who do that?
Perhaps someone who actually understood biology and fisheries management.
From a biological standpoint, it makes no difference to a fish stock whether it is caught by a handful of “industrial” vessels, or by a relative multitude of small-scale fishermen. So long as the stock is not subject to overfishing—and the last stock assessment made it clear that menhaden are not—it doesn’t matter to the fish whether they are killed by a big net or a small one.
A menhaden killed by a tackle shop owner tossing a cast net is just as dead as one killed by a reduction boat. Its removal from the population has the same impact.
But the reduction boats are just bigger, more attractive targets for the advocates’ bile. Something that they hope they can convince people to hate.
The references to “shipping the profits overseas” and shipping fish overseas to be used as feed in “foreign” fish farms follows a similar logic. The idea is to convince people that the “industrial” fleet is engaged in activities that, at their core, are somehow un-American.
Of course, such comments ignore the fact that Ocean Harvesters is an American—not a foreign—company, and that the boats are crewed by American fishermen who spend their income from the fishery supporting American families, buying or renting American real estate, and patronizing American stores in their home towns.
And while most of the menhaden are shipped overseas, no one, other than some people trying to minimize trawler bycatch, seems concerned that the Alaskan walleye pollock trawl fishery—the largest single fishery in the United States, when measured by poundage caught—ships the majority of its product overseas (or that those 3 billion tons of pollock that are landed each year are caught by “industrial” boats).
That sort of anti-foreign rancor is generally saved for the menhaden reduction fleet.
Similarly, The Forage Fish Campaign seems bound to attack the reduction industry because the menhaden it catches are used “Not for food. Not for bait,” but rather for aquaculture and agricultural feeds, which again might be good for growing hostility against the reduction industry, but makes no logical sense.
After all, there aren’t many people in the United States who will want to use menhaden for food, and it’s not clear why using menhaden for bait—bait that is used to catch what are essentially luxury species such as lobster or blue crabs—is a higher and better use of the menhaden resource than using it to feed the Atlantic salmon imported from Canada or Norway or Scotland and eaten by millions of Americans, or using it to feed the birds raised on “factory livestock” farms to produce your kids’ chicken nuggets.
Once more, it’s all provocative language intended to create hostility toward a particular fishery, which makes no logical sense at all.
September 8, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued nearly USD 20 million (EUR 17.2 million) in awards for catfish products, which it will use for federal nutrition programs like national school lunches.
The department first declared its intention to purchase USD 20 million worth of farm-raised catfish in July as part of a USD 76.5 million (EUR 65.8 million) bulk buy of several products.
September 8, 2026 — The following opinion was published by Samuel Blatchley:
Three years ago the D.C. Circuit told the National Marine Fisheries Service it could not build a biological opinion on worst-case assumptions. Last week the agency wrote that principle into its own priorities.
In Maine Lobstermen’s Ass’n v. National Marine Fisheries Service, 70 F.4th 582 (D.C. Cir. 2023), the court held that the Service may not, when faced with uncertainty, give the benefit of the doubt to an endangered species by relying on worst-case scenarios or pessimistic assumptions. The ESA calls for an empirical judgment about what is likely. The effects of an action are those reasonably certain to occur, found on clear and substantial information. Projections the agency itself concedes are very likely wrong do not meet that standard. The court reversed, directed judgment for the lobstermen, and ordered the biological opinion vacated as applied to the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries. I was on the case for the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, alongside the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the State of Maine, and Lodge 207. Our clients were facing regulations that would have taken jobs and boats out of the water.
Two things happened last week that build on it.
On September 1 the House passed H.R. 9436, the Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act, 219 to 196, extending the current regulatory pause for the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries from 2028 to 2035. The Administration issued a statement strongly supporting passage. It now goes to the Senate.
On September 2 NOAA Fisheries issued its agency-level priorities. On the Northeast lobster fishery, the agency states it will not mandate ropeless gear, that any decision support tools or models used by the Take Reduction Team must be independently and empirically reviewed, and that any future Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan will rest on best available data rather than worst-case scenario modeling.
That last clause applies the principle the court enforced in 2023, and returns the agency to the position it had taken itself in 2019 before the biological opinion abandoned it.
Worth keeping the distinction clear. The bill would change a statute. The priorities document is a policy statement that amends nothing and can be withdrawn. What lasts is the record. The Take Reduction Team is building the file the next rule will stand on, and how its models get vetted will matter long after the announcement does.
Common sense science is not a slogan. It is what the statute already required, and what it took a court to enforce. The Senate should pass H.R. 9436, and the agency should be held to the standard it has now stated, so the next rule protects both the whale and the communities that fish alongside it.
#FisheriesLaw #Lobster #EndangeredSpeciesAct #RightWhale #AdministrativeLaw
Samuel P. Blatchley is a maritime, fisheries, and insurance attorney and Proctor in Admiralty at Eckland & Blando LLP, where he represents vessel owners, commercial fishermen, marine businesses, insurers, and industry organizations in complex litigation, regulatory matters, marine casualties, coverage disputes, and commercial disputes throughout the United States. His practice includes federal admiralty litigation, fisheries and environmental regulation, marine insurance, limitation of liability, vessel arrests and maritime liens, and matters involving NOAA Fisheries and other federal and state agencies. He has represented fishing-industry interests in significant state and federal litigation, including the D.C. Circuit challenge to NOAA Fisheries’ North Atlantic right whale regulations on behalf of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. Blatchley is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New York and is a graduate of Tulane University Law School, where he earned a Maritime Law Certificate and served on the Tulane Maritime Law Journal.
September 5, 2026 — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is backing legislation that would expand the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) in federal fish stock assessments, potentially giving fisheries managers another tool to collect more frequent and comprehensive data.
According to Cornell University, the Fisheries Science Modernization Act would direct NOAA to test and validate eDNA technologies for use alongside existing fishery assessment methods. The bill is led by Senator Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Senator Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, co-chairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus, and has eight republican, democratic, and independent co-sponsors.
NOAA currently develops stock assessments using methods including research vessel surveys, bottom trawls, acoustic sonar, longlines, and commercial fishing data. Those assessments ultimately help regional fisheries managers establish annual harvest levels.
The legislation calls for NOAA to expand its use of eDNA to increase survey coverage and frequency while potentially lowering costs.
September 5, 2026 — McLean, Virginia, U.S.A.-based seafood nonprofit Seafood Task Force (STF) recently launched a first-of-its-kind risk-based assurance and remediation program on hundreds of tuna vessels to improve traceability and labor conditions.
According to a release by STF, the program was developed to improve social responsibility challenges facing tuna vessels, especially in high-sea fishing fleets. The program will run for 5 years, with a stated goal of both identifying issues and course-correcting them during that period.
September 3, 2026 — From Gulf Coast shrimpers’ lips to the Trump administration’s ear, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced an extensive set of priorities for reforming the nation’s fisheries on Wednesday, a so-called “operational roadmap” to unshackle what the administration views as a lucrative and essential but unnecessarily burdened industry.
An overture to the executive branch’s nascent America First Seafood Strategy, Wednesday’s announcement continues NOAA’s work under Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness, an April 2025 White House executive order that called seafood “one of the most heavily regulated sectors in the United States.” Since then, according to a news release, NOAA Fisheries has received input from more than 700 entities, including regional fishery councils, commercial producers, and members of the public.
September 3, 2026 — The U.S. House has passed a bill that would delay the start of new federal regulations intended to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.
The bill, known as the Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act, would extend an existing moratorium on new federal rules for fishermen until 2035.
The current moratorium, which was championed by Maine’s congressional delegation and inserted into a 2023 budget measure, is set to lift at the end of 2028.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently announced the beginning of a public comment period intended the launch discussions about new federal regulations, which the agency said must be in place by the last day of 2028.
September 3, 2026 — Washington D.C., U.S.A.-based advocacy organization Global Labor Justice (GLJ) recently launched a campaign called “Freedom For Fishers” targeting an unnamed U.S. seafood brand with multiple documented allegations of labor violations.
GLJ has been working with Forum Silaturahmi Pelaut Indonesia – Pingtung Migrant Fishers Union (FOSPI-PMFU) for the past three years on the campaign to collect evidence of the alleged labor violations the two organizations say involve fishers working for the U.S. seafood company’s supply chain.
September 3, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries has announced an “operational roadmap” of priorities it will pursue under U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order, Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.
“Through these priorities, the agency is taking actionable steps to fulfill the president’s vision of making the United States the world’s dominant seafood leader,” NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs said in a release. “NOAA is proud to deliver real-world results to the American public through innovative solutions that streamline regulations.”