It’s
widely agreed that the
United States has the most
aggressive and successful
regulations in place to
conserve marine mammals. The
majority of those are the
result of the 53-year-old
Marine Mammal Protection
Act, which has helped
safeguard animals such as
whales, seals and otters
from the detrimental impacts
of fishing, pollution and
overhunting.
Now,
the Trump administration is
more firmly laying down the
hammer on other nations
around the world, too. At
the end of August, the
National Marine Fisheries
Service determined
that certain fisheries in
more than 40 nations do not
meet marine mammal
protection standards—and
will not be allowed to
export their catches to the
U.S. until they do.
As
the world’s biggest importer
of fish, the U.S. holds
significant sway over the
global seafood market, and
this decision marks a win
for marine mammal
conservation, environmental
groups say. But some experts
fear that proposed
legislative changes to the
Marine Mammal Protection Act
(MMPA) and Trump
administration layoffs at
the agencies that enforce it
could pose threats to these
gains in the long term.
That
means U.S. regulatory
decisions related to
fisheries have ripple
effects for the rest of the
world. The MMPA requires
the United States to
ban the import of commercial
fish products that result in
the “incidental kill or
incidental serious injury of
ocean mammals in excess of
U.S. standards.”
Each
year, more than 650,000
whales, dolphins and other
marine mammals are caught
and killed in fishing gear
around the world, often
accidentally—becoming what’s
known as “bycatch.” Even in
the U.S., animals like
endangered North Atlantic
right whales are often
entangled in lobster fishing
gear, which I
covered in 2024.
In
2016, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric
Administration published
a final rule for how
to evaluate whether
countries are meeting U.S.
standards to protect marine
mammals from fishing
impacts. The agency gave
other nations a five-year
exemption period to compile
and submit this data, which
was eventually extended to
2025.
In
August, NOAA’s National
Marine Fisheries Service released
global findings on
MMPA compliance by fisheries
in other countries, based on
factors ranging from fishing
gear types to marine mammal
monitoring programs. The
agency found that 89
nations, including New
Zealand, Canada, Costa Rica
and India, met standards
across the board.
Meanwhile,
certain or all fisheries in
46 nations, including
Russia, Mexico, Grenada and
China, did not meet MMPA
regulations—or failed to
submit any information.
These identified fisheries
will no longer be able to
import seafood in the U.S.
starting January 2026 until
they improve marine mammal
conservation in accordance
with the law, according to
NOAA.
“In
many countries, there’s no
enforcement,” Andrew Trites,
the director of the marine
mammal research unit at the
University of British
Columbia in Canada, told me.
There’s a lack of research
on marine mammal populations
in these areas, too, “and in
some cases, they’re
certainly threatened, but
there isn’t even the data
necessary to properly
document it.”
However,
he said, “ignorance does not
give you a pass.”
The
head of NOAA Fisheries,
Eugenio Piñeiro Soler, said
in a press
release that this
round of import bans “is a
major win for American
workers, consumers, and our
marine ecosystems.”
He
added: “By enforcing these
standards, we’re protecting
our domestic seafood
industry and ensuring only
safe, sustainable seafood
reaches American tables.”
A
Tentative Win: Environmental
groups celebrated the move,
having long called for the
U.S. to impose stronger
restrictions on countries
that violate the MMPA.
“It
is high time that the United
States implement this
important provision of the
law and penalize countries
that harm so many marine
mammals,” Georgia Hancock,
director and senior attorney
of the nonprofit Animal
Welfare Institute’s marine
wildlife program, said in a
press
release. “Marine
mammals contribute immense
value on a global
scale—ecological,
economical, and cultural—and
killing them by these cruel
methods must have serious
consequences.”
The
bans come four months after
President Donald Trump
issued an executive
order titled
“Restoring American Seafood
Competitiveness,” which
denounced the country’s
reliance on seafood imports.
The order tasked regional
fishery management councils
to provide updated
recommendations to “reduce
burdens on domestic fishing
and to increase production”
and directed two federal
agencies to launch a
strategy that promotes
domestic seafood products.
Trites
was “quite intrigued” by
NOAA’s emphasis on bolstering
the American seafood
industry with this
latest round of bans against
countries with MMPA
violations, rather than
focusing more on its impact
on marine mammals.
“The
goal of [the MMPA] was never
to make money. The goal was
very pure in the sense that
the world should be held to
a higher standard, and that
one should not be killing or
injuring marine mammals in
the name of profit,” he
said. “But I mean, at the
end of the day, frame it in
terms of saving mammals or
frame it in terms of
increasing the value of U.S.
fisheries and the economy:
Marine mammals are the
winners, either way you look
at it.”
However,
there are concerns that
recent actions could
jeopardize these
conservation gains. The
Trump administration’s
proposed budget eliminated
funding for an advisory
body that provides
independent, science-based
oversight for marine mammal
regulatory decisions, and
the fate of this Marine
Mammal Commission is still
up in the air. Since
January, the administration
has also fired hundreds of
NOAA staff members,
including those who help
carry out conservation
efforts.
For
the new import restrictions,
each country has to remain
in compliance. “That’s a lot
of paperwork, and you’ve got
an administration in-house
that needs to assess this
information,” Trites said.
“Hopefully, they have
maintained the people … that
are going to make this
successful.”
NOAA
Fisheries did not respond
when asked if the agency
would have enough staff to
do that work.
In
a separate push, Republican
U.S. Rep. Nick Begich of
Alaska proposed changes to
the Marine Mammal Protection
Act in July to weaken some
regulations, which could
undermine the law’s
effectiveness, Scientific
American reports.
For
now, though, the law remains
a gold standard for marine
mammal conservation, experts
say.
“It’s
done enormously good things
for the health of marine
mammals in the United
States,” Trites said, “but
also in other places of the
world because the United
States set a very high bar.”
More
Top Climate News
Renewable
energy is booming in China,
which could help fill the
gaps left by the United
States in the global clean
energy transition, according
to a new
report. Authored by
the think tank Ember, the
report found that exports of
solar panels, batteries,
electric vehicles and heat
pumps from China to emerging
economies are rising,
providing an alternative to
previously cheaper fossil
fuels, Sara
Schonhardt reports for
E&E News.
“Policy
and investment decisions
made in China over the last
two decades are
fundamentally changing the
basis of China’s own energy
system, and enabling other
countries to also move
swiftly from fossil to
clean,” Muyi Yang,
coordinating lead author of
Ember’s 2025 analysis, said
in a statement.
Up
to 30 Syrian brown bears
are being kept in
inadequate conditions
in private homes and
businesses across
Armenia—and a team of
environmentalists and
government representatives
is rushing to rescue them
ahead of the upcoming
climate summit in the
country, Lori
Youmshajekian reports for
Yale Environment 360.
In the early 1990s, many
private homeowners and
businesses held bears in
captivity in Armenia as a
sign of status and wealth
but kept the animals in
squalor, feeding them poor
diets—like bread and soda—or
confining them to small
cages. The practice has been
mostly phased out following
stricter regulation and
pushback from animal welfare
groups and the public, but
government representatives
and the nonprofit Foundation
for the Preservation of
Wildlife and Cultural Assets
have identified a few bears
that still need rescuing.
In
case you missed it, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture is
working to scrap the
Roadless Rule, which
protects almost 59 million
acres of federal forest
land from road
construction and logging,
as Sarah
Mattalian reported for
Inside Climate News.
Experts say that the
fast-tracked comment
period—just three
weeks—limits public input on
the rule, which could have
profound impacts for fire
management and wildlife
living in national forests.
If you would like to
submit a comment, you have
until Sept. 19 and can
do so here.
Postcard
from … Boston
For
this week’s installment of
“Postcards From,” our senior
editor Caroline Jones sent
along a photo from a
particularly interesting
traffic jam in
Massachusetts.
“People
say cars are the cause of
Massachusetts’ many traffic
back-ups but have you ever
considered a turkey who’s
committed to standing in the
middle of the road might be
to blame?” Caroline wrote.
“This tall tom stopped
traffic on my residential
street in Boston for 15
minutes on Sunday,
unbothered by both honking
horns and curious dogs,
before eventually meandering
onto the sidewalk.”
ICN
staffers naturally wanted to
know how a turkey ended up
in the middle of a major
city.
“His
presence is a testament to
the work of the
Massachusetts Division of
Fisheries & Wildlife,”
Caroline explained. “The
commonwealth’s original
population of wild turkeys
was wiped out due to habitat
loss in the 19th century.
MassWildlife biologists have
reintroduced them over the
past few decades, beginning
with a group of 37 birds
originally trapped in New
York and rereleased in
Western Massachusetts in the
1970s. Now the population
hovers around 35,000!”
Today’s
Climate readers, please
send in your own nature
photos for us to feature
in our “Postcards From”
section. Email them to
kiley...@insideclimatenews.org.
We would love to see more
photos from urban areas
like this, where nature
can thrive in unexpected
places.
