The United States is one of the world’s largest importers of seafood, which makes it critical to know that what we eat was caught responsibly. The seafood supply chain is complex, with products changing hands many times from the point of catch to your dinner plate. This complexity allows seafood caught by illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing or using forced labor to be sold at much lower costs, undercutting hardworking American fishermen, and ending up on your dinner plate.
Fortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a program that requires of seafood imports to be held to the same standards as U.S.-caught fish and ensures that they come from a legal fishery. But the program applies to less than half of seafood imports.
Tell Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and NOAA to expand seafood traceability to all imported seafood so that Americans can have more confidence that the seafood they eat is safe, legally caught, and honestly labeled.
Dear Secretary Lutnik and Assistant Administrator Soler:
I am writing to urge you to increase the catch documentation and traceability of our seafood to ensure that illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) seafood is not entering our country. To accomplish this goal, I request that you implement the proposals in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) “Action Plan to Enhance the U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program”, including fully expanding the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) to all species.
Illegally caught seafood directly competes with American fishermen, and in 2019 alone, an estimated $2.4 billion worth of seafood from IUU fishing was imported into the United States. While 94% of our seafood is imported, less than half of seafood imports are subject to NOAA’s traceability requirements. This significant gap leaves room for fish caught by IUU fishing to enter the U.S. market, and as a result, American fishermen are undercut by IUU seafood products by an estimated $60.8 million per year. IUU fishing is also associated with human rights abuses, with an estimated 128,000 people held in forced labor aboard fishing vessels every year.
On April 17, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14276, Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness, recognizing the need to combat IUU fishing “and protect our seafood markets from the unfair trade practices of foreign nations,” and since 2016 NOAA has used SIMP to do just that. This program requires catch documentation for imported species that are at high risk of seafood fraud and IUU fishing. It currently covers 13 species and species groups, including popular seafoods like shrimp, red snapper, and Atlantic blue crab. SIMP should be expanded to all species to ensure that all seafood coming into the U.S. is properly identified and to ensure that it was sourced in a legal fishery.
In 2023, NOAA conducted a full review of the seafood traceability program and consulted with more than 7,000 individual stakeholders, including industry, customs brokers, fishers, seafood processors, and U.S. government agencies. Based on the feedback received, in November 2024, NOAA released the “Action Plan to Enhance the U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program” to improve the program. These improvements are key to keeping IUU fishing products out of the country and include:
- Expanding catch documentation to 100% of imported seafood, with species at higher risk for IUU fishing and fraud requiring more data;
- Requiring catch documentation 72 hours in advance of entry into the U.S. to evaluate the veracity of the catch information before the product is released onto the market;
- Increasing collaboration with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to block fraudulent shipments;
- Modernizing and increasing the capacity of the International Fisheries Trade Permit system; and
- Improving data analytics, which will allow the system to flag shipments for risk and anomalies.
Americans are depending on NOAA to protect us from illegally caught seafood. Strengthening seafood traceability could help increase Americans’ confidence in the government’s ability to protect the food supply, which is at a record low of 57%. Based on a national poll of U.S. voters, conducted for Oceana by the nonpartisan polling company Ipsos in 2024, 90% of registered voters polled agree that imported seafood should be held to the same standards as U.S.-caught seafood.
I ask you to fully implement NOAA’s SIMP Action Plan. To protect seafood consumers and domestic fishermen, NOAA must prevent seafood that has been caught illegally, including with human rights abuses, from entering our markets. Until then, honest fishermen, seafood businesses, consumers, and the oceans will pay the price.
Sincerely,
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