The US Court of International Trade has ordered the Trump administration to ban seafood imports from Mexico caught with gillnets that kill the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.
Actioned as the result of a lawsuit filed by conservation groups, the import ban covers all fish and fish products from Mexican commercial fisheries that use gillnets within the vaquita’s range in the Upper Gulf of California. This includes shrimp, corvina (drum fish), sierra (Spanish mackerel) and chano (bigeye croaker) from the area.
“A ban on gillnet-caught seafood from Mexico’s Gulf of California is the life line the vaquita desperately needs,” said Giulia Good Stefani, staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued the case before the court. “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.”
Legal obligation
The ruling follows a lawsuit filed in March by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity, and it affirms Congress’ mandate under the US Marine Mammal Protection Act that the US protect not just domestic marine mammals, but foreign whales, dolphins, and porpoises as well.
Mexico has failed to permanently ban all gillnets in the vaquita’s habitat but as few as 15 vaquita remain, with almost half the population drowning in fishing gillnets each year. Without immediate additional protection, the tiny porpoise could be extinct by 2021.
