Court Finds Federal Government’s Plan To Rebuild Sardine Population Off U.S. West Coast Is Unlawful

Judge DeMarchi ruled that the Fisheries Service’s rebuilding plan for Pacific sardines failed to prevent overfishing and did not ensure the population would rebuild within the legally required timeframe. To address these legal flaws, the Fisheries Service must develop a new rebuilding plan and ensure that their catch limits are set at a level that prevents overfishing and ensures rebuilding.  

Pacific sardines are small schooling fish that are essential food for humpback whales, dolphins, sea lions, brown pelicans, Chinook salmon, and other important commercially and recreationally caught fish and marine animals. Loss of sardines can cascade through ocean ecosystems, as evidenced in the mid-2010s when more than 9,000 starving California sea lion pups and yearlings washed up on beaches and brown pelicans experienced unprecedented reproductive failures due to lack of adequate food. Following repeated failures by the agency to properly manage the sardine population or develop a meaningful rebuilding plan, Oceana, represented by Earthjustice, sued the Fisheries Service in 2021 after Pacific sardines collapsed by more than 98% between 2006 and 2020.  

The ruling found that the Fisheries Service continued to use a faulty approach that assumed a faster growing population. That approach produced inflated catch limits because it did not reflect the agency’s own science, which showed that the sardine population has been extremely low and not producing well for over a decade. The Court also held that the Fisheries Service failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of the rebuilding plan under the National Environmental Policy Act by relying on incorrect assumptions about catch levels and failing to analyze the impacts on humpback whale critical habitat.  

After years of decline and warnings from fishery scientists, Pacific sardines were officially declared overfished in 2019. This triggered a legal requirement under the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act for the Fisheries Service to develop a rebuilding plan within two years that contains catch limits and other measures to rebuild sardines. Yet despite repeated urging from Oceana and others, fishery managers approved a faulty rebuilding plan with no changes to existing management and which their own analysis determined would not rebuild sardines.  

Current projections and the Fisheries Service’s existing management eerily mirror the disastrous collapse of sardines in the 1950s after their heyday of the “Cannery Row” era, immortalized by John Steinbeck. Historically, the sardine population peaked at 3-4 million metric tons when the sardine fishery ranked as the largest in the western hemisphere before a similar mismanagement scenario contributed to overfishing and a crash of the sardine population more than 70 years ago.  

It is well documented that while sardines naturally have “boom and bust” population cycles excessive fishing pressure exacerbates natural population declines. This week’s ruling will compel the Fisheries Service to set catch rates that reflect the actual productivity of the sardine stock and ensure timely population rebuilding to healthy levels.