Cases

Protecting Hawai'i's False Killer Whales

In Brief:

False killer whale on a longline.

Photo: NOAA

For years, the National Marine Fisheries Service has illegally ignored its own data, which show the Hawai‘i-based longline fleet currently is injuring and killing false killer whales at over twice the level the population can sustain. In 2004, under pressure from an Earthjustice lawsuit, the National Marine Fisheries Service finally re-classified the Hawai‘i-based longline fishery as "Category I" -- a designation for fisheries that annually kill and seriously harm marine mammals at unstainable rates -- due to its excessive incidental take of Hawai'i's false killer whales.  Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, this recategorization should have triggered the prompt establishment of a take reduction team to devise a plan to bring the fishery's incidental take  "to insignificant levels approaching a zero mortality and serious injury rate."  NMFS has failed to do so, claiming inadequate funding. At the same time, NMFS has never applied the congressionally-mandated factors to allocate resources where insufficient funding is available for all required take reduction actions.

Hawai‘i’s marine mammals are paying with their lives for NMFS’s refusal to comply with the law.  Earthjustice is suing NMFS to compel it to heed Congress’s command to protect Hawai‘i’s false killer whales from needless death and injury. 

Updated: September 28, 2009

Case #1901