Forty-two countries are in violation of failing to adopt bycatch prevention measures, which bans them from importing certain seafood products to the United States in an effort to protect whales and dolphins, who are at the greatest risk of bycatch of commercial fisheries. Countries facing the embargo include Mexico, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey.
The National Marine Fisheries Service determined that these countries failed to meet U.S. bycatch standards such as what U.S. fishers must follow under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to limit the marine mammal bycatch.
“It is high time that the United States implement this important provision of the law and penalize countries that harm so many marine mammals,” Georgia Hancock, director and senior attorney of the Animal Welfare Institute’s Marine Wildlife Program, said. “Marine mammals contribute immense value on a global scale—ecological, economical, and cultural—and killing them by these cruel methods must have serious consequences.”
A 2023 report by conservation groups found that many other nations failed to meet U.S. bycatch standards, including the United Kingdom, India and South Africa, according to a press release. This prompted conservation groups, such as the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Welfare Institute and NRDC, to petition, which led to a lawsuit that pushed the National Marine Fisheries Service to come to the decision to enact a seafood ban.
“If you want to sell your seafood in the U.S., it is only fair that you live up to the same strict marine mammal protections that other fishermen abide by. And if you can’t do that, you shouldn’t have a market here, or anywhere else for that matter,” Zak Smith, a senior attorney at NRDC, said. “The promise of the Marine Mammal Protection Act is that seafood sold in the United States comes only from commercial fisheries that do not kill or seriously injure marine mammals. U.S. consumers and fishermen deserve nothing less and today’s action brings us closer to that promise.”
While the U.S. is the world’s largest seafood importer, each year “more than 650,000 whales, dolphins and other marine mammals are caught and killed in fishing gear around the globe,” according to a press release. A result of bycatch from fishing gear include gillnets, longlines, trawls, pots and traps, marine mammals either drown or suffer injuries that they eventually die from.
“This is a lifesaving victory for whales and dolphins swimming in the waters of Mexico, Vietnam and other nations,” Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said. “These conservation sanctions will mean fewer beloved marine mammals will get caught and killed in fishing gear. I only wish the U.S. government had gone further, since many other nations also need to do a better job avoiding bycatch.”
The ban will go into effect in January 2026.
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