CIT Grants Preliminary Injunction Prohibiting Imports of Mexican Fish Caught Near Endangered Species

Imports of all fish products from Mexican fisheries that use gillnets close to a nearly extinct species of porpoise will be banned while a legal proceeding on the ban proceeds, Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann said in a July 26 ruling. The ruling granted a preliminary injunction meant to prevent further threats to vaquita porpoises, of which fewer than 30 remain, "pending final adjudication of the merits," it said. While legal arguments remain undecided, "what cannot be disputed is that the vaquita’s plight is desperate, and that even one more bycatch death in the gillnets of fisheries in its range threatens the very existence of the species," CIT said.

The preliminary injunction requires the government to "ban the importation of all fish and fish products from Mexican commercial fisheries that use gillnets within the vaquita’s range," CIT said. The range is described as "approximately 4,000 square kilometers in size, and as relevant to this case, overlaps with commercial fisheries that target shrimp, curvina, chano, and sierra, and with an illegal fishery targeting the endangered totoaba," it said. The National Resources Defense Council and other animal welfare groups filed the injunction request in April as part of an ongoing lawsuit. “The Federal Government has an obligation to enforce the ban immediately,” Zak Smith, a senior attorney at the NRDC, said by email.

The animal welfare groups were pleased with the decision, they said in a news release. “Collectively, our organizations have spent over a decade working to save the vaquita, and never has extinction felt so close, but now the world’s smallest and most endangered porpoise has what may be its very last chance,” said Giulia Good Stefani, NRDC's lawyer who argued the case in court. The NRDC said the "ban covers a wide range of seafood products -- including shrimp, Spanish mackerel, and bigeye croaker -- from Mexico’s commercial fisheries within the vaquita’s habitat range." The U.S. "imported more than 1,400 tons of Mexican fish and shrimp caught with gillnets, valued at roughly $16 million" in 2017, the group said.

The groups' lawsuit cited an August 2016 final rule by the National Marine Fisheries Service (see 1608110008) that provides for emergency rulemaking to immediately ban imports from a fishery based on "adverse impact on a stock or species.” The NMFS didn't immediately comment.