The issue of who in the United States is charged with regulating aquaculture in federal waters was back in the courtroom this week, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration argued its case that it should lead all policy development.
NOAA representatives spoke before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, hoping to repeal a September 2018 ruling by a federal judge who rejected NOAA’s guidelines for establishing finfish aquaculture operations in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming that the agency did not have authority to do so under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
In that case, the judge said the law deals with only the traditional fishing of wild fish and that the agency’s interpretation of the word harvesting in the law was done on purely a semantic level.
The issue was initially brought to court by a group of fishing and environmental organizations that included the Center for Food Safety, the Recirculating Farms Coalition, as well as the Gulf Fishermen’s Association and the Gulf Restoration Network. The coalition cited concerns about how aquaculture would affect native fish stocks, the environmental consequences of the use of antibiotics to control disease and the effect of widely available farmed fish on the marketplace, and fishermen’s bottom lines.
Attorney George Kimbrell, speaking for those groups, urged the three-judge appellate panel to uphold the 2018 ruling. He admitted that NOAA might be the correct agency to permit and regulate federal water aquaculture, but not until Congress addresses the issue and passes a law.
“Don’t shoehorn it into a law that was never intended for that purpose and whose metrics just don’t match,” Kimbrell said, according to a report from the Associated Press.
NOAA attorney Frederick Turner argued that the existing law under the under the Magnuson-Stevens Act is broad, and gives NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service the authority to permit and regulate fish farming, not just the taking of wild-caught fish.
But the appellate panel was not quick to agree.
“Why would we step in and say you get what Congress hasn't given you?” Judge Stephen Higginson asked Turner at one point.
The appellate panel is expected to rule on the issue later this year.
Photo courtesy of United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
