A federal effort to crack down on illegal fishing is moving forward again on Capitol Hill, with Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan’s Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvest (FISH) Act advancing out of the U.S. Senate.
According to reporting from KUCB, the Senate passed the bill on March 22, sending it to the U.S. House for consideration. The legislation targets vessels engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing by blocking them from accessing U.S. ports and waters.
Under the proposal, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be responsible for creating a blacklist of offending vessels, with enforcement carried out by the U.S. Coast Guard, KUCB reported.
Sullivan pointed directly to foreign fleets as a growing concern for U.S. fishermen.
“These fleets, which literally utilize slave labor in many cases, are a cancer on fisheries throughout the world and in Alaska and undercut our fishermen, who fish sustainably,” Sullivan said in the statement.
The legislation also aims to strengthen enforcement capabilities and support international agreements to curb illegal practices. Previous reporting from SeafoodSource outlined the broader scope of the bill and the challenges it seeks to address. The FISH Act would require the U.S. government to maintain a blacklist of vessels involved in IUU fishing and ban those vessels from U.S. waters, while also increasing Coast Guard inspections at sea.
The bill further calls for reports on how emerging technologies could be used to combat illegal fishing, as well as assessment of how Russian and Chinese fishing activity impacts the U.S. seafood market.
Globally, IUU fishing remains a significant issue.
“Globally, IUU fishing makes up approximately 20 percent of global seafood harvested. Catches result in economic losses estimated between $10 billion and $23 billion to fisheries that fish legally each year,” Sullivan said in earlier remarks to the Senate committee.
Sullivan also tied the issue directly to Alaska’s struggling fisheries. “For Alaska, IUU fishing is a growing threat. It certainly is a major factor in our very low commercial salmon harvests that we’ve had in the last few years,” he said, noting that illegal fishing in the North Pacific is among several factors affecting returns.
The FISH Act has been introduced in multiple forms since 2022, according to SeafoodSource, with lawmakers pushing to move the legislation forward after earlier attempts stalled.
With Senate approval now secured, the bill’s future rests with the House before it can be sent to the president for final approval.
