Protect the fish that feed the Pacific
Sardines may be small, but they play an outsized role in the ocean. As forage fish, they transfer energy from tiny plankton to some of the ocean's most iconic wildlife, providing a critical food source for whales, dolphins, sea lions, seabirds, salmon, and tuna.
For the past 11 years, following years of overfishing when the stock was collapsing, commercial fishing closures have been in place on the West Coast to help Pacific sardines repopulate and retain their role as a critical ocean food source. But while directed commercial fishing has largely been curtailed, fishing exemptions have continued to allow the catch of sardines while the population remains far below healthy levels. And now, long before they’re ready to be directly commercially fished again, the Trump administration is looking to increase catch limits and eliminate the sardine rebuilding plan in its next push to weaken environmental protections around the country.
Under a new Executive Order on seafood production, federal agencies are pressuring fishery managers to expand fishing activity, even for overfished and vulnerable fish populations. Pacific sardine management is one of the first major tests of whether critical protections for overfished species can be weakened before they get a real chance at recovery.
In 2024, Oceana won a legal challenge to improve an inadequate and unlawful Pacific sardine rebuilding plan that allowed significant fishing pressure to continue. Stronger protections based on science and requirements of the law were finally adopted in 2025. But rather than give this plan a chance to work, regulators are already proposing to eliminate the new rebuilding plan and greatly expand fishing before the sardine population has recovered.
Pacific sardines are a public resource that belongs to all Americans and all wildlife. Protect the fish that feed the Pacific coast.
Petition Letter
To the Pacific Fishery Management Council:
Dear Chair Hassemer, Ms. Quan, and Council Members:
I urge you to protect Pacific sardines and uphold science-based management of our shared ocean resources by maintaining rebuilding measures designed to recover this critical forage fish.
Pacific sardines are one of the most important forage fish off the U.S. West Coast that once supported a thriving commercial fishery. Sardines are critical in the California Current food web, feeding whales, dolphins, sea lions, salmon, tuna, marlins, sharks, seabirds, and countless other marine species. Insufficient fishery management safeguards, however, allowed commercial fishing levels that were too high. This exacerbated the Pacific sardine collapse off the U.S. West Coast. Agency scientists warned that fishing pressure needed to be reduced sooner, but those warnings were ignored at the time. The result was a major population crash that ultimately led to the fishery being closed and declared overfished under federal law.
Today, the Pacific sardine population has still not recovered. It is at the lowest level in decades, and it is not improving.
In 2025, after years of scientific review and public engagement, a federally required rebuilding plan was finally adopted to give Pacific sardines the best chance to recover. That rebuilding effort must be allowed to work.
I am deeply concerned by proposals that would weaken these protections before recovery is achieved. Any changes to the Pacific sardine stock definition or management measures should be based on a new assessment of the population and a robust analysis of potential impacts. Any new management approaches should strengthen — not undermine — the recovery of this vital forage fish.
The Trump administration's Executive Order on American Seafood Competitiveness seeks to expand domestic seafood production. This cannot come at the cost of sustainable fisheries management. Increasing fishing pressure on an overfished population before it has recovered would undermine decades of scientific progress and will repeat the management failures that caused this collapse in the first place.
I urge the Pacific Fishery Management Council to:
- Maintain strong rebuilding protections for Pacific sardines until the population has fully recovered.
- Increase the population cutoff threshold for Pacific sardines to ensure fishing doesn't exacerbate future collapses.
- Base any changes to stock definitions or harvest policies on a new stock assessment and rigorous, peer-reviewed analysis of environmental impacts.
- Ensure management decisions account for the critical ecological role sardines play in supporting whales, seabirds, salmon, and the broader Pacific Ocean ecosystem.
- Uphold the conservation requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
The Pacific Ocean cannot thrive without healthy forage fish. Please protect Pacific sardines and give this population the opportunity to recover.
Sincerely,
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