On August 8th, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Animal Welfare Institute, and Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit against the US government over the delay in enacting the import restrictions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The import provision, which would ban the import of seafood products from fisheries with high levels of marine mammal bycatch, was originally scheduled to go into effect in 2021. However, its implementation has been delayed multiple times and is now not planned to into effect December 31st, 2025.
Fisheries bycatch is considered the greatest threat to marine mammals worldwide which have very few, if any, natural predators. However, bycatch continues to be a global problem, with over 600,000 marine mammals estimated to be accidentally caught in fisheries each year. Most marine mammal bycatch occurs in net fisheries, particularly pelagic gillnets.
The import rule of the Marine Mammal Protection Act would require importers to provide evidence that fishery bycatch rates of marine mammals do not exceed US fishery limits, or the product could not be imported to the US market.
In the NRDC press release, Kristen Monsell, ocean legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity says that, “It’s long past time for the federal government to stop dragging its feet and start banning seafood imports from countries harming too many marine mammals.” She further emphasized that marine mammal populations can’t continue to withstand these high bycatch rates for much longer.
Read the NRDC press release below.