SAN FRANCISCO— The National Marine Fisheries Service announced today that it will form a federal task force to curb Pacific humpback whale entanglements in fishing gear. Dozens of humpbacks are entangled off the Pacific Coast every year.
Today’s announcement stems from a 2023 legal victory by the Center for Biological Diversity requiring the Service to form the “take reduction team” by Oct. 31, 2025, and convene that team before Nov. 30, 2025.
“I’m thrilled that our Pacific humpbacks will finally get action to keep them a bit safer from sablefish pot gear,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center and a member of the new team. “These whales migrate hundreds of miles to feed off the West Coast and they need to arrive to safe waters. The agency has been authorizing the fishery without any measures to ward off entanglements for far too long. I look forward to working with other team members to develop protections for humpbacks.”
The team is composed of commercial fishermen, state and federal regulators, scientists and staff of environmental organizations. It is charged with developing recommendations for regulatory measures. The team’s establishment, which the court held was required under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, means the Service must issue regulations within 13 months that reduce deadly humpback whale entanglements in commercial sablefish pot gear.
In the 2023 federal court opinion, U.S. District Court Judge James Donato said the Service “cannot indefinitely delay developing a take reduction plan while continuing to authorize...permits for the incidental take of endangered and threatened humpback whales.”
According to agency estimates, the sablefish pot fishery kills or seriously injures about three humpback whales every two years. On average, about 25 humpback whales are entangled annually off the U.S. West Coast, and more than half the entanglements are not traced to a specific fishery.
The Trump administration has reduced the scope of the team from including other West Coast pot fisheries that entangle humpback whales to addressing only the sablefish pot fishery, which was the subject of the lawsuit. Last week a federal court also upheld the agreement deadlines despite the government’s request for a pause during the shutdown.
The sablefish fishery uses 2-mile-long strings of 30 to 50 pots. To make fishing with pots safer, the Center has urged the Service to require a transition to new ropeless or “pop-up” gear.
Most trap and pot fisheries use static vertical lines that can wrap around whales’ mouths, fins or tail, wounding them and depleting their energy, often drowning them as they drag heavy traps and rope. Pop-up traps use bags or buoys on coiled ropes triggered by remote or time-release sensors to float the traps to the surface, eliminating static entangling lines.
