In a few short weeks, a 50-year-old law that most Americans have never heard of could gut the seafood economy—and take your favorite menu items with it.
Seafood strategist Joe Klaus sounded the alarm in a recent LinkedIn essay that deserves far wider attention. His piece lays out how, on January 1, 2026, the U.S. plans to begin strict enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act’s import rules, blocking wild-caught fish and shellfish from countries that can’t prove their fleets spare dolphins, whales, and sea lions.
That sounds noble. But in practice, it could sever up to 80 percent of America’s affordable blue-crab supply and disrupt the flow of everyday tuna, whitefish, and shrimp.
Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Venezuela, China—nations that built entire seafood sectors around the U.S. market—failed to earn “comparability status.” If a pending lawsuit doesn’t pause enforcement, their exports vanish overnight.
For diners, that means no gradual shift or gentle price rise—just the sudden disappearance of crab cakes, crab dip, and crab-stuffed flounder. The average restaurant crab cake that costs $4.50 to make today could jump to $9 or simply cease to exist. Domestic production? About 29 thousand pounds a year versus 60 million pounds imported. The math doesn’t add up.
When Good Policy Meets Bad Timing
As is so often the case with conservation-oriented regulations the issue isn’t the stated intent—the U.S. seafood industry has made massive strides to eliminate marine mammal “bycatch” going back several decades. The issue is how the policy is being applied.
The short version is that Washington ignored its own import rule for four decades, extended exemptions for another ten years, then decided to flip the switch all at once—with 120 days’ notice. That’s not environmental stewardship; it’s bureaucratic whiplash. And given the byzantine process and reams of red tape fisheries need to wade through to demonstrate their compliance, it’s a practical impossibility.
A rational rollout would have phased standards in over time, letting fisheries adapt, and giving restaurants and distributors space to shift sourcing. Instead, decades of non-enforcement created dependence, and now sudden enforcement threatens to collapse a supply chain that can’t be replaced at any price.
Collateral Damage in the Name of Conservation
If the ban hits, American consumers suffer first—but so do the very fisheries that need support to modernize. The U.S. market is their lifeline and incentive to improve. Cutting them off cold doesn’t save dolphins; it just drives trade elsewhere, to markets with fewer environmental demands.
The industry’s lawsuit isn’t about dodging sustainability—it’s about time. A delay would keep menus intact, preserve jobs, and still move toward humane fishing.
The Takeaway
As Klaus rightly warns, a forgotten clause in a 1970s law is about to do what no recession or pandemic ever did: erase the humble crab cake from America’s mid-priced menu. Conservation policy should be set soberly and rationally, not administered via shock therapy.
If policymakers want to protect marine life without capsizing an industry, they need to trade grand gestures for practical timelines. Otherwise, come January, we’ll have one more example of good intentions drowning in regulatory overreach—and one less reason to order seafood.