Will unilateral action improve the global conservation status of marine mammals? A first analysis of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act’s Import Provisions Rule

The United States Marine Mammal Protection Act contains a provision that requires imported fisheries products to be captured in a manner that does not result in greater incidental mortality or serious injury of marine mammals than authorized under domestic standards. The provision has existed for many years but was implemented as a Final Rule for the first time in 2017. The Rule has the potential to provide unprecedented conservation benefits for marine mammals worldwide and will affect more than 100 harvesting nations that export fisheries products to the U.S. To understand the potential effects of the new Rule, we conducted a review of current regulatory frameworks in select exporting countries and performed an analysis of marine mammal bycatch data contributed by 23 exporting nations likely to comply with the Rule. The countries we examined fell into three broad groupings. The first group of countries has robust fisheries and marine mammal management systems and routinely collects data on marine mammal abundance and bycatch. The second group has fisheries management systems that address bycatch in general terms, but less information is available on marine mammal populations, and specific policies regarding marine mammal protection or bycatch are lacking. Fisheries management in the third group is less robust, enforcement capacity is lacking and very little, if any, data on marine mammals or bycatch are available. In general, reports of marine mammal bycatch aligned with our categorizations of exporting countries. All countries in the first group reported at least some bycatch data. In the second group, two of five countries lacked any quantitative bycatch data and in the third group, no countries reported bycatch data. We conclude that it will be challenging for the United States to issue comparability findings for many exporting countries under the conditions outlined in the Rule. Nevertheless, we expect that some countries will increase protective measures for marine mammals in attempts to meet these standards and that the Rule will have a net positive effect on the conservation status of marine mammals globally.