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Tell the National Marine Fisheries Service to Protect Marine Mammals Now!

Dear John,

The risk of getting caught in fishing gear as "bycatch" is the leading threat to whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals. Every year, more than 650,000 marine mammals worldwide die or suffer serious injury when they are enveloped in nets or pierced by fishhooks.

For decades, US fishers have been required to comply with standards under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to minimize marine mammal entanglement. The MMPA requires foreign fisheries selling seafood on the US market to meet these same standards, yet this critical part of the law, with its vast potential to help marine mammals, has gone virtually ignored.

In 2016, the National Marine Fisheries Service finally set a deadline of 2021 for foreign fisheries to meet US standards or face a ban. That deadline was extended to 2022, then to 2023. Recently, the agency again extended the deadline, to December 2025. Every time the agency pushes compliance into the future, more marine mammals die needlessly.

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What You Can Do
Tell the National Marine Fisheries Service to ban seafood imports now that do not meet the US standards for marine mammal protection ([link removed]). Our precious marine mammals and ocean ecosystems cannot wait until 2025 or beyond.

Please be sure to share our action alert with family, friends, and co-workers, and encourage them to take action, too. As always, thank you very much for your help!

Sincerely,

Georgia Hancock, Esq.
Director and Senior Attorney
Marine Life Program

P.S. Follow us on Facebook ([link removed]), X (formerly Twitter) ([link removed]), and Instagram ([link removed]) for other important animal protection actions and news. Check out the latest edition of the AWI Quarterly ([link removed])!

Photo by Ed Lyman, NOAA

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Animal Welfare Institute
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The Animal Welfare Institute is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 1951 and dedicated to reducing animal suffering caused by people. We seek better treatment of animals everywhere: in the laboratory, on the farm, in commerce, at home, and in the wild.

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