Conservation Groups Sues Hawaii's National Marine Fisheries Service

Seeking an end to the continuing slaughter of false killer whales in the waters of Hawai‘i, Earthjustice, representing a coalition of conservation groups, filed suit in federal court in Honolulu today against the National Marine Fisheries Service, challenging the agency’s failure to devise a plan to protect the whales from the Hawai‘i-based longline fishery. The coalition includes Hui Mälama I Koholä, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Turtle Island Restoration Network.

Each year, the Hawai‘i-based longline fleet hooks and entangles false killer whales, resulting in serious injury or death through drowning. The Fisheries Service’s own studies show that, for nearly a decade, the Hawai‘i longline fishery has been killing Hawai‘i’s false killer whales at rates far beyond what the population – which currently numbers only about 500 – can sustain.

“In 1994, Congress amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act to require the Fisheries Service to try to eliminate marine mammal death and serious injury in commercial fisheries,” explained David Henkin, an attorney with Earthjustice who is representing the coalition in court. “For years, the agency has ignored its legal duty to develop a plan to reduce the longline fishery’s deadly interactions with false killer whales and other marine mammals. Hawai‘i’s marine mammals are paying with their lives for the Fisheries Service’s refusal to comply with the law.”