The U.S. Senate has once again voted to pass the Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvest (FISH) Act, legislation that would give the federal government more tools to crack down on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing conducted by foreign fleets.
The FISH Act directs the U.S. government to create a blacklist of vessels banned from U.S. waters due to their participating in IUU fishing. The bill also supports increased at-sea inspections by the U.S. Coast Guard and requires a report on what technologies can be used to better combat IUU fishing.
The Senate voted to pass the bill by unanimous consent on 22 March.
“This is the bill that goes after the trawl fleets of Russia and China that ravage the oceans, don’t abide by any international harvest standards, are really the pirates of the sea. They use slave labor, by the way, on their vessels, and they’re all over the world, especially these Chinese gray fleets,” U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said in a social media video following the vote. “They hurt our coastal communities, our fishermen, but it’s all over the world – Africa, Latin America. So this is a bill that goes after these gray fleets. It sanctions them so they can’t pull into ports in America and it’s very bipartisan, important work we do to have healthy, sustainable fisheries.”
Sullivan is a sponsor of the bill and has pushed hard for its adoption since first introducing a version of it in 2022 with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island). The senators reintroduced the legislation again last year, and it was approved by a Senate committee in April 2025.
“Globally, IUU fishing makes up approximately 20 percent of global seafood harvested. Catches result in economic losses estimated between [USD] 10 billion to USD 23 billion [EUR 9 billion to EUR 20 billion] to fisheries that fish legally each year,” Sullivan told the committee at the time. “For Alaska, IUU fishing is a growing threat. It certainly is a major factor on our very low commercial salmon harvests that we’ve had in the last few years. There are many reasons for a smaller salmon catch in Alaska, but one of them, clearly ... is IUU fishing in the North Pacific and parts outside of Alaska’s waters.”
The Senate passed the legislation in October 2025 after Sullivan attached the legislation to the annual military appropriations bill – however, that version of the legislation ultimately stalled out in the House. Now, the Senate has approved the legislation once again, this time as a stand along bill, and Sullivan expressed confidence that the FISH Act will finally be passed by the House and become law.
“Stay tuned, we’re going to get this over the goal line in the House,” Sullivan said.
