A NOAA Fisheries’ rule banning seafood imports from 46 countries that lack marine mammal protections comparable to those in the U.S. was imposed without adequate industry input and put American companies on an unrealistic compliance schedule, the National Fisheries Institute and 11 co-plaintiffs argue in a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The suit filed the U.S. Court for International Trade in New York City maintains NOAA’s Sept. 2 decision to bar the entry of products from 240 commercial seafood species lacked “reasoned explanation, fishery-specific evidence, or consideration of the devastating domestic and international economic consequences they are already causing.”
Final implementation of the 2016 fish-import provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act “constitutes arbitrary and capricious decision-making,” the lawsuit states. The bans would take effect on Jan. 1, 2026.
“After a decade of assessing fisheries, without stakeholder input, NOAA has given effected members of the seafood community only four months to come into compliance or face complete shutdown,” Gavin Gibbons, the fisheries institute’s chief strategy officer, said in a press release. “We are talking about U.S. processing and distribution businesses working with imported, raw materials that can’t be sustainably harvested at this volume in our own waters.”
