NOAA Fisheries has determined that South Africa is among 10 African countries that have been granted permission to export fish and fish products from all of their marine fisheries to the U.S. from January 2026 onward.
The announcement was made as part of NOAA Fisheries’ crackdown on nations that do not meet requirements under the U.S.’s Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).
In early September, NOAA ruled that 240 foreign fisheries from 46 countries do not meet MMPA requirements and, therefore, are ineligible to ship their products to the nation starting in the new year.
In Africa, several countries had some of their fisheries denied the opportunity to access the U.S. market under NOAA’s determination, including Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, and Somalia.
However, several other African countries fully met the guidelines, according to NOAA: Morocco, Seychelles, Mauritius, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Tunisia, and South Africa.
South Africa Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE) Marine Resources Management Chief Director Saasa Pheeha told Seafoodsource the country has engaged with NOAA Fisheries since October 2021, when it sought a preliminary MMPA approval.
“Thereafter, we had to provide substantial data, documentary evidence, and other information to prove compliance, including having a progressive regulatory framework for governing our marine resources,” he said.
Import provisions under the MMPA include stringent restrictions on marine bycatch, and Pheeha explained that South Africa has done well to address the issue across its 22 commercial fisheries sectors, as each have “a fixed list of fishing rights holders who are allocated an annual permit that comes with very strict conditions, including subscribing to the ecosystem approach to fisheries management as enshrined in our Marine Living Aquatic Resources Act.”
NOAA Fisheries, for its part, said the decision to approve South African fisheries was largely based on the DFFE’s sound initial application and the country's prompt and thorough responses to NOAA’s clarification questions during the review process.
NOAA added that South Africa “does not have any stocks at a high risk of extinction interacting with its fisheries and has demonstrated that it prioritizes mitigation for fisheries, particularly those with a high risk of interaction/entanglement.”
With the U.S. endorsement of South Africa's fisheries, Pheeha expects demand to rise for the nation’s products.
"Our expectation is that with several other countries failing to make the cut, demand for South Africa fish and fish products in the U.S. will increase because this market is still growing,” he said, further explaining that although the U.S. is not one of South Africa's top seafood export destinations compared to the E.U., China, Japan and other markets, “we still anticipate our share of the U.S. seafood market will grow after January 2026.”
Still, Pheeha acknowledged that U.S. trade policies have been erratic and that the situation could change quickly.
“I need to point out no one is sure how the current U.S. political landscape, especially in terms of how the U.S. is handling trade matters with the rest of the world, is going to impact us, but should all else remain the same, we expect an increase in demand for our seafood products in the North American market,” he said.
NOAA’s MMPA determinations have sparked heavy backlash, including a lawsuit from a coalition of seafood importers and industry groups in the U.S., such as the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) and the Restaurant Law Center.
NFI Chief Strategy Officer Gavin Gibbons told SeafoodSource in early October that the rulings could be devastating for importers of several species, as well as the end customers they supply, and that the lawsuit focuses on the fact the import bans are not based on real harm or the effectiveness of foreign regulations.
Rather, he said, they are based on specific regulatory components with no evaluation of whether marine mammals are actually being protected.
“There’s this idea that these fisheries would be banned because they’re actively harming marine mammals. In many cases, that is totally inaccurate. The failures in these fisheries in terms of the MMPA often come from things like data deficiencies, lack of observers, gear types that NOAA doesn’t like, pieces of inadequate reporting, and bycatch mitigation differences. We’re not talking about documented marine mammal interactions,” he said. “This all goes back to NOAA insisting that this is a government-to-government effort – a strictly regulatory effort – and they would not and did not interact with stakeholders over the course of a decade where they were assessing these fisheries. Meanwhile, the stakeholders are the ones pushing forward with sustainability advancements. How do you assess the impact when you don’t contact those who would be impacted? The reality of that is American job loss. These are value-adders, these are distributors, these are foodservice, these are restaurant groups. That’s where those impacts are going to be felt here in the U.S., not in a fishery that’s 6,000 miles away.”
