Every year, more than 650,000 whales, dolphins, seals, and other marine mammals are accidentally killed by commercial fishing operations around the world. They drown in gillnets. They are caught in trawls and longlining gear and discarded at sea. It is the single biggest threat to marine mammals on the planet — bigger than climate change, bigger than deliberate hunting.

And the United States is helping to fund it.

America imports nearly 90% of its seafood supply. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the U.S. is legally required to ban seafood imports from any country whose fisheries kill marine mammals at higher rates than allowed under American law. American fishers are required to invest in monitoring, gear modifications, and bycatch reduction to meet those standards. Foreign competitors selling into the same market are supposed to meet the same bar.

They are not. And the U.S. government is looking the other way.

Conservation groups have now sued the federal government to force it to block seafood imports from eight countries — including Norway, the UK, Ecuador, India, and Taiwan — whose fisheries are killing dolphins, porpoises, and whales at levels that exceed U.S. standards. In Taiwan, bycatch threatens the critically endangered Taiwanese humpback dolphin. In the UK, porpoise and common dolphin bycatch is happening at unsustainable levels. The vaquita — a porpoise found only in the Gulf of California — has been reduced to as few as 10 individuals, pushed to the brink of extinction largely by gillnet bycatch.

Trade pressure works. When the U.S. has enforced these standards before, countries changed their practices. Ireland banned the killing of seals. New Caledonia outlawed the intentional killing of marine mammals. Grenada introduced new bycatch reporting requirements. All it takes is the political will to enforce the law that already exists.

We're calling on NOAA Fisheries to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act and immediately ban seafood imports from fisheries whose accidental catch of whales, dolphins, and seals exceeds American legal limits.