For over 50 years, U.S. fishermen have had to follow strict rules to protect marine mammals like dolphins and whales. Foreign fishermen selling seafood to America didn’t have to follow these same rules—until now. Starting January 1, 2026, foreign fisheries must prove they protect marine mammals as well as U.S. fisheries do, or their seafood will be banned from the U.S. market. Based on NOAA’s loose assessment, only about 15% of imported seafood would be affected. But major crab suppliers from Southeast Asia failed, and Venezuelan suppliers didn’t even apply for evaluation. To maintain access to these foreign crabs, seafood importers are now suing to stop this rule from taking effect on all seafood, which would leave the double standard and unfair markets in place for U.S. fishermen.
About the Importer’s Legal Action
On Thursday, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) and Restaurant Law Center, joined by eight other U.S. seafood importers and distributors, filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Court of International Trade challenging NOAA Fisheries’ implementation of the import provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).
Through its lawsuit, NFI and the other plaintiffs have asked the court to strike down all of NOAA Fisheries’ comparability findings under the MMPA “and set aside all import prohibitions resulting from those unlawful determinations.” Further, while the government is shut down and NOAA Fisheries staff and U.S. Department of Justice attorneys are furloughed, NFI and the other plaintiffs filed a request for a preliminary injunction on Tuesday seeking to prevent enforcement of the MMPA’s import provisions while their lawsuit is pending.
If successful, NFI’s lawsuit would continue to allow foreign seafood harvesters access to the U.S. market while operating under conditions that would shut down U.S. commercial fisheries and would preserve the dominance that imported seafood has gained in the United States through the application of vastly dissimilar standards on U.S. commercial fishermen versus those operating overseas.
About the Law
The MMPA was enacted in 1972 and its import provisions will be enforced broadly for the first time on January 1, 2026.
Under the MMPA, it is unlawful to import seafood “caught in a manner which the [federal government] has proscribed for persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, whether or not any marine mammals were in fact taken incident to the catching of the fish.” (16 U.S.C. § 1372(c)(3)). The MMPA further requires the U.S. government to “ban the importation of commercial fish or products from fish which have been caught with commercial fishing technology which results in the incidental kill or incidental serious injury of ocean mammals in excess of United States standards.” (16 U.S.C. § 1371(a)(2)).
Simply put, at the time of its enactment over half a century ago, the MMPA set the same rules for everyone.
After decades of inaction, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) petitioned NOAA Fisheries to enforce the MMPA’s import provisions in 2008. In response, the agency began a rulemaking process and, as the agency observes, “[t]he U.S. commercial fishing industry supported the rulemaking because it wanted fisheries in other nations to be subject to the same standards of marine mammal conservation as U.S. commercial fisheries.”
Despite broad support for enforcement of the MMPA’s import provisions, NOAA Fisheries did not take action to fully implement the rule for another seventeen years while continuing to rigorously enforce the MMPA on domestic commercial fisheries.
NOAA Fisheries’ Comparability Findings
In its implementation of the MMPA’s import provisions, NOAA Fisheries attempted to review the practices of all foreign commercial fisheries to determine whether seafood from these fisheries has “been caught with commercial fishing technology which results in the incidental kill or incidental serious injury of ocean mammals in excess of United States standards.”
In that process, NOAA Fisheries evaluated roughly 2,500 different commercial fisheries in 135 countries. Following this evaluation, NOAA Fisheries awarded the vast majority of foreign commercial fisheries affirmative comparability findings.
- 89 countries (two-thirds) passed completely—all their fisheries got approval
- This includes four of the top ten countries that export seafood to the U.S.
- These countries export about $13 billion in seafood to the U.S. (52% of our total imports)
- 34 countries passed for some fisheries but not others
- They export about $11.8 billion in seafood to the U.S. (47% of total imports)
- About 31% of their exports ($3.6 billion) come from fisheries that failed
- 8 countries were denied approval entirely
- They export only $12.8 million to the U.S. (0.05% of total imports)
- 4 countries didn’t even apply, including Russia and Venezuela
- Venezuela is the only significant exporter among these, accounting for 0.4% of U.S. seafood imports
Accordingly, the vast majority of foreign seafood imported into the United States will not be significantly impacted by enforcement of the MMPA’s import provisions.
However, beginning on January 1, 2026, seafood from foreign commercial fisheries that failed to qualify for an affirmative comparability finding will be banned from importation to the United States. Based on its analysis of import data, NOAA Fisheries estimates that this could affect around 15 percent of the total value of seafood exported to the United States annually.
Why this Matters to Seafood Importers
Of the 240 foreign commercial fisheries denied affirmative comparability findings across forty-six nations, NFI and the other plaintiffs focus their complaint on the impact of the MMPA’s import provisions on foreign swimming crab supply chains. NFI alleges that if the plaintiffs “cannot import crab, the consequences will be immediate – affecting operations, employees, customers, and consumers.”
NFI and the other plaintiffs argue that although the import prohibition will not take place until the beginning of next year, “[i]t takes roughly eight to ten weeks to ship processed crab from Southeast Asia to the United States,” meaning that “crab leaving the docks this week will likely arrive after January 1, 2026, and be barred from entry.”
The inability to access Southeast Asian swimming crabs is alleged to have devastating effects on American companies that have become entirely dependent on foreign sources of seafood. For example, Phillips Foods states: “[a]ll of Phillips Foods’ imports are affected by the comparability denials, whether the products are produced in Asia or in the United States, because all our production and sales in the United States rely on the raw materials shipped from Asia-both blue swimming crab and tuna.”
Other American seafood importers observe that imported swimming crab is one of their most profitable product lines. In one court filing, Supreme Crab & Seafood noted that imported red swimming crab “accounts for a substantial portion” of the company’s annual revenue and “represents our highest-margin line.”
The plaintiffs also note that these circumstances have developed due to the lack of any previous regulation on seafood imports, with Heron Point Seafood reporting that “[w]e are fundamentally a crab importing company” that “has been importing crab from Southeast Asia for over 20 years” and has “never faced import restrictions before.”
Nevertheless, although the legal filings focus on the potential harm to the supply of foreign swimming crab in the U.S. market, NFI’s lawsuit seeks to prevent the enforcement of the MMPA’s import provisions on any foreign commercial fishery, including those operating in countries, like Venezuela, that did not bother to even attempt to demonstrate any protections for marine mammals. Thus, while U.S. commercial fisheries have been consistently threatened with shutdowns of their operations under the MMPA, this lawsuit seeks to preserve NOAA Fisheries’ failure to apply similar standards to foreign commercial fisheries.
Bottom Line for U.S. Fisheries
NOAA Fisheries reports that last year 113.7 million pounds of blue crab were landed in the United States, down from 152.2 million pounds five years ago, 140.4 million pounds ten years ago, and 202.6 million pounds in 2011. Of this amount, roughly half of that blue crab was harvested in either Louisiana (33.0 percent) or North Carolina (16.8 percent), while another 30 percent was landed in Maryland (17.7 percent) and Virginia (12.9 percent).
Parts of the U.S. domestic swimming crab industry have warned that they are facing an imminent collapse due to competition from cheap imports, including Venezuelan crab meat. Over the last four years, the United States has imported roughly a quarter of a billion dollars worth of swimming crab meat from Venezuela, with $56.6 million imported last year alone and another $33.7 million imported through July of this year.
In the Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness Executive Order of April 17th, President Trump explained that: “Most American fish stocks are healthy and have viable markets. Despite these opportunities, seafood is one of the most heavily regulated sectors in the United States. Federal overregulation has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood . . .”
The market’s current dependence on foreign sources of supply for seafood that is also harvested domestically is, in part, the result of the imbalance between what NOAA Fisheries has demanded under the MMPA from U.S. commercial fisheries versus foreigners supplying this country. The lawsuit seeking to stop the implementation of the MMPA’s import provisions makes clear that as long as there remains unrestricted access to cheap sources of foreign seafood, there will be no meaningful investment in the recovery of the U.S. commercial fishing industry.
Read the NFI’s October 9, 2025 complaint here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/NFI-Complaint-Against-MMPA-Enforcement.pdf
Read the NFI’s October 14, 2025 motion for preliminary injunction here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/NFI-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction-MMPA-Import-rule.pdf