Oceans Program

Highlights of our work include:

Pacific Ocean

• We fought to ensure that threatened sea otters have a chance to recover. Most recently, we intervened on the side of the government to successfully turn back the misguided efforts to eliminate vital protections for the imperiled marine mammal.
• We’re fighting to secure science-based catch limits and protective measures for anchovy and sardines off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. These forage fish are essential to healthy populations of sea lions, pelicans, and other sea birds, as well as humpback whales. However, climate-driven ocean conditions and excessive fishing have exacerbated declines in these naturally fluctuating populations and have threatened the food supply for dozens of marine fish and wildlife species.
• We continue to advocate for measures to stop whales and leatherback sea turtles from entangling in fishing gear.
• We successfully advocated for the need for stronger protections for oceanic whitetip sharks in the Western Pacific. A threatened species, whitetip sharks are killed in significant numbers in both Pacific and Atlantic fisheries as bycatch.

Atlantic Ocean

• We’re working to ensure that a planned dredging project in Fort Lauderdale doesn’t further stress Florida’s coral reefs — the only near-shore reef system in the continental United States and the driver for a multibillion-dollar fishing and recreational economy.
• We helped a broad coalition stop seismic airgun surveys. The blasts from these airguns not only harm marine mammals and other ocean life — including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale — but they also act as a dangerous precursor to offshore drilling for fossil fuels.
• We successfully fought to remove deadly sink gillnet fishing gear that can entangle highly endangered right whales from thousands of square miles.
• We’re litigating to force the government to put limits on the bycatch of dusky shark populations, which have plummeted by 85% since the 1970s. Dusky sharks are a key top predator in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico that are struggling to rebuild after suffering from decades of overfishing.

Gulf of Mexico

• We’re challenging rollbacks of key conservation measures for bluefin tuna — including a highly successful prohibition on pelagic longline fishing in critical spawning areas.
• We’re also challenging the federal government’s failure to adequately protect threatened and endangered marine life — such as sea turtles and the highly endangered Rice’s whale — from oil and gas development.
• We’re fighting to reinstate critical drilling safety regulations, adopted to prevent a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The Trump administration rolled back these safety measures without regard to the Gulf communities that would be devastated by another catastrophic oil spill.