WASHINGTON— The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service determined today that Mexico may no longer export seafood from 21 high-risk fisheries, including shrimp and shark fisheries in the Gulf of California and Ocean Pacific. These fisheries entangle whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals like critically endangered vaquita porpoises and fail to meet U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act standards. The seafood bans will take effect in January 2026.

“This is a lifesaving victory for whales and dolphins swimming in Mexican waters,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These conservation sanctions will mean fewer beloved marine mammals will get caught and killed in fishing gear. I only wish the U.S. government had gone further, since many other nations beyond Mexico also need to do a better job avoiding bycatch.”

The Fisheries Service determined that multiple Mexican export fisheries do not meet the same standards U.S. fishermen must meet under U.S. law and are therefore prohibited from shipping products to the United States. These include gillnet and trawl fisheries in the Upper Gulf of California and Pacific, targeting sharks, blue shrimp, curvina, anchoveta, rays, lobsters, croakers and others. The agency also upheld existing bans on Upper Gulf of California gillnet fisheries because of their deadly impact on critically endangered vaquitas and denied comparability findings for other high-risk fisheries.

Thirty-three other countries — including Brazil, China, Ecuador and Peru — received only partial approvals, allowing some but not all of their fisheries to continue exporting to the United States. Some nations, like Benin, were also denied because they failed to apply to continue exporting seafood to the United States. A 2023 report by conservation groups found that many other nations fail to meet U.S. bycatch standards and should face bans, including the United Kingdom, India and South Africa.

“If you want to sell your seafood in the U.S., it is only fair that you live up to the same strict marine mammal protections that other fishermen abide by. And if you can’t do that, you shouldn’t have a market here, or anywhere else for that matter,” said Zak Smith, a senior attorney at NRDC. “The promise of the Marine Mammal Protection Act is that seafood sold in the United States comes only from commercial fisheries that do not kill or seriously injure marine mammals. U.S. consumers and fishermen deserve nothing less and today’s action brings us closer to that promise.”

Bycatch is the greatest conservation threat to marine mammal populations worldwide. Each year more than 650,000 whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals are caught and killed in fishing gear around the globe. These animals are unintentional “bycatch” of commercial fisheries and either drown or are tossed overboard to die from their injuries.

“It is high time that the United States implement this important provision of the law and penalize countries that harm so many marine mammals,” said Georgia Hancock, director and senior attorney of the Animal Welfare Institute’s Marine Wildlife Program. “Marine mammals contribute immense value on a global scale — ecological, economical and cultural — and killing them by these cruel methods must have serious consequences.”

From 1996–2021 at least 218 whales were confirmed entangled off Mexico’s Pacific and Baja California coasts. Humpbacks were the most commonly entangled whales, but gray, sperm, Bryde’s and fin whales were also caught in fishing gear. Gillnets entangled the most animals, followed by pots and traps, underscoring the need to phase out high-risk gear.

The United States is the world’s largest seafood importer, purchasing more than $26.6 billion in seafood products in 2024. That year the country imported nearly 99,000 tons of seafood from Mexico, valued at over $596 million, including about 11 tons of sharks (worth $133,000) and more than 4,878 tons of wild shrimp from the Pacific (worth $67 million).

Since 1972 the Marine Mammal Protection Act has prohibited the United States from allowing foreign seafood to enter the country unless exporting nations meet the same standards applied to U.S. fishers for limiting marine mammal bycatch. But the Fisheries Service ignored the directive for decades, until conservation groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Welfare Institute, and NRDC — petitioned and eventually sued to compel action. This culminated in an agreement that set a deadline for today’s decision.