A federal judge in California has ordered NOAA to release photos, videos and other visual data documenting the catch of nontargeted species by the state’s halibut trawl fishery.
In a ruling, Judge Josephine Staton of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California told NOAA to release 77 photographs to the environmental group Oceana detailing the bycatch of fish and marine mammals caught up in nets used by bottom trawlers off the California coast.
Oceana had requested the photos in 2022 under a public records request, but NOAA declined to provide them, citing an exemption where the release of documents violates nondisclosure provisions in federal law. NOAA argued that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act prohibited the release of the photos because doing so could identify the identities of fisheries observers whose identities were to be kept private.
But Staton said the “plain language of the MSA authorizes the release of the responsive photographs,” particularly when they are “released as an aggregate form of photographs, or a ‘collection’ or ‘agglomeration’ of photographs” that does not directly or indirectly disclose the photographer’s identity.
