Court Victory for Earth’s Rarest Marine Dolphin
With fewer than 50 Māui dolphins remaining, they are the rarest marine dolphin on Earth. Their survival is primarily threatened by harmful fishing practices that net the dolphins.
The rarest marine dolphin on the planet swims in the waters along the West Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Today, less than 50 critically endangered Māui dolphins are thought to exist.
Harmful practices used by some New Zealand fishing companies are driving the dolphins to extinction: When fishers target commercial seafood species using gillnet and trawl gear — large nets that hang in the water for days or drag through the sea, scooping up everything in their path – the dolphins can become entangled and seriously harmed or killed.
The U.S. government has allowed seafood imports from two New Zealand fisheries that use these practices without comparable safeguards in place to ensure the Māui dolphin population is able to recover to a sustainable level. This is despite the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which requires the government to ban seafood imports from any foreign fishery that excessively harms marine mammals.
Now, the United States Court of International Trade has ruled that the U.S. government’s decision to allow these seafood imports ignored threats to all marine mammals, arbitrarily assessed impacts to Māui dolphins, and violated federal law. The Court’s decision comes after Earthjustice and Law of the Wild filed suit in December 2024 to protect this dwindling species on behalf of the grassroots group Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders, local New Zealand advocates working to raise awareness and spur action to protect these intelligent, social dolphins.
What does this court victory mean for Māui dolphins and marine mammals?
Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders won a decisive victory on August 26, 2025 with the court commenting that “[t]he deficiencies in the [U.S. Government’s analysis] are severe.” The court then set aside the U.S. Government’s finding that these New Zealand fisheries do not kill or injure Māui dolphins or other marine mammals more than United States standards.
This court victory makes clear that the United States had no basis to conclude that New Zealand is doing enough to protect the Māui dolphin from fisheries. It also sets a higher standard for agency findings under the MMPA that will benefit marine mammals around the world.
Why is there no trade ban in place?
As noted in an earlier blog, the MMPA includes a trade prohibition for those fisheries that are not comparable to those in the United States. A ban ensures that the seafood Americans eat will not contribute to the depletion or extinction of marine mammals in any part of the world. In addition, trade bans ensure that U.S. commercial fishers don’t face unfair competition in the U.S. market from foreign seafood that was caught using harmful gear or under lower marine mammal protection standards.
The court in this instance declined to institute an immediate trade ban, noting that these circumstances “may merit the implementation of an import ban going forward.” Instead, the court has ordered the U.S. Government to file a new comparability finding for these fisheries by November 24, 2025, and one which will, presumably, address the numerous deficiencies the court identified in its opinion. This means, unfortunately, that imports from fisheries impacting Māui dolphins are currently being allowed into the U.S. and onto our plates.
How does this case fit in with other fisheries that import into the United States?
The U.S. Government has been reviewing fisheries around the globe to determine, just as they did with fisheries impacting Māui dolphins, whether or not they catch marine mammals in excess of U.S. standards. Because of their critically endangered status and fisheries being the main threat, in 2019 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (in the United States) and Sea Shepherd New Zealand, compelled the U.S. government to review fisheries related to Māui dolphins in a separate and timelier process.
In August 2025, the United States government released comparability findings for 135 nations and approximately 2,500 fisheries around the world. As an added complication for Māui dolphins, this release of global comparability findings, three days after the Māui dolphin legal victory, also included a new 2025 Comparability Finding for all New Zealand fisheries, including the fisheries that impact Māui dolphins.
The U.S. Government once again found New Zealand fisheries to be comparable to those in the United States. However, because of the timing, this new 2025 finding does not have the benefit of addressing the multitude of flaws which caused the court to deem the 2024 finding unlawful.
What next for Māui dolphins?
Māui dolphins are critically endangered. Fifty years ago, there were 2,000 Māui dolphins. Since then, the population has plummeted by over 97%. Over the past two decades, the population has declined by 3 to 4% per year.
With such a severely low population, Māui dolphins can’t afford the delayed actions by the U.S. agencies charged with ensuring that United States actions don’t contribute to the species’ decimation. That’s why we filed – and won – this lawsuit and why we will continue to make sure that Māui dolphins – and marine mammals generally – are afforded the full protection of the law.
Learn more about Māui dolphins and this legal work to protect them.
Earthjustice’s Oceans Program uses the power of the law to safeguard imperiled marine life, reform fisheries management, stop the expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling, and increase the resiliency of ocean ecosystems to climate change.
