The National Marine Fisheries Service has formally enacted a ban on imports in the United States of all seafood caught by gillnets in the range of the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. In July 2018, a judge in the U.S. Court of International Trade forbid the U.S. from accepting imports from commercial fisheries that use gillnets in the northern part of the Gulf of California, which is home to the vaquita. Scientists estimate there are fewer than 30 individual vaquita remaining.
An order published in the Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government, officially enacted the ban on 28 August. The National Resource Defense Council estimates the ban will affect about USD 16 million (EUR 13.7 million) worth of U.S. seafood imports from Mexico – primarily shrimp, Spanish mackerel, and bigeye croaker.
The ban was enacted following provisions in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a 2016 law designed to address incidental and intentional mortality and serious injury of marine mammals in fisheries producing seafood exported to the United States. The ban resulted from an initial petition by The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Animal Welfare Institute filed in May 2017. A five-year exemption period usually allowed by the law was nullified by the court order in July.
Gillnets deployed in an illegal fishery for totoaba (an endangered fish sought for its swim bladder due to black market demand within China) are the primary source of vaquita mortality, according to the article in the Federal Register. NMFS has now officially banned all identified products coming from fisheries interacting with vaquita as a potential focus for import restrictions under the MMPA.
The NMFS rule also now requires that imports of seafood products from Mexico carry a Certification of Admissibility to be released from customs. The document must certify that the shipment’s contents did not originate the Upper Gulf of California – the area where the ban is in effect.
Photo courtesy of Yale University
