NMFS Publishes List of Foreign Fisheries Subject to Equivalence Requirements or Banned in 2022
The National Marine Fisheries Service on March 16 announced the release of its first “List of Foreign Fisheries” that must meet comparability guidelines by 2022 or else have their fish products become ineligible for importation. The new list puts foreign fisheries in one of two categories -- “export” and “exempt” -- that have different marine mammal protection requirements these fisheries and their home countries must meet before being declared eligible for importation.
NMFS announced in an August 2016 final rule that it would ban all fisheries that don’t demonstrate equivalence with U.S. marine mammal protection regulations (see 1608110008). Fisheries listed as exempt must only have comparable requirements prohibiting intentional killing or injury of marine mammals. Export fisheries must also demonstrate comparable effectiveness to the U.S. regulatory program for reducing accidental marine mammal bycatch.
Exempt fisheries on the list have a “remote likelihood” of accidental death or injury of marine mammals in the course of commercial fishing operations at that fishery. Export fisheries have a higher chance of harm or mortality to marine mammals due to fishing. Fisheries for which not enough information is available to make a determination are classified as export fisheries. This final List of Foreign Fisheries includes 910 exempt and 2,386 export fisheries, according to an NMFS webpage on the list.
If by Jan. 1, 2022, a fishery does not have the required NMFS comparability finding in place, whether by providing information to NMFS or creating new regulations, fish from that fishery will no longer be eligible to be imported into the United States, NMFS said in a guide on the new regulations issued in December 2016. NMFS will publish a list in the Federal Register of countries and fisheries that have received or been denied a comparability finding.
NMFS will publish an additional version of the list in 2020, ahead of implementation of the new import ban. The agency “will continue to urge harvesting nations to gather information about marine mammal bycatch in their commercial fisheries to inform the next draft and final” foreign fisheries list, it said. “If, during the five-year exemption period, the United States determines that a marine mammal stock is immediately and significantly adversely affected by an export fishery, NMFS may use its emergency rulemaking authority to institute an import ban on products from that fishery,” it said.