MMPA Seafood Import Prohibitions: Why Your Shipment Needs a COA

A frozen seafood container that cleared routinely in 2025 can sit on a CBP hold in 2026 even though the supplier, the species and the fishing method never changed. The reason is the MMPA seafood import rule that took effect on January 1, 2026. NOAA Fisheries published its comparability findings at 90 FR 42395 on September 2, 2025, denied findings for a long list of foreign fisheries, and from the first day of 2026 fish and fish products from those fisheries may not enter the United States.

The ban itself is not what catches most importers. What catches them is the second layer: any product harvested by the same nation and entered under an HTS code that NOAA lists for a banned fishery must travel with a Certification of Admissibility, signed by an official of the harvesting or exporting nation and tied to that single shipment. Importers who assume the rule only touches the named fishery discover the problem at the port. This guide explains how the prohibitions work, what the certificate has to do, how the Seafood Import Monitoring Program layers on top, and what the entry file needs before the vessel sails.

Comparability Findings and the Denied Fisheries List

The import provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act require foreign fisheries that export to the United States to hold a comparability finding from NOAA Fisheries. In plain terms, the exporting nation has to show that its regulatory program for marine mammal bycatch in that fishery is comparable in effectiveness to the US program. NOAA evaluates each fishery separately, so a single country can have some fisheries approved and others denied.

The 2025 determination at 90 FR 42395 is the first time this framework has turned into an actual border control on this scale. NMFS evaluated about 2,500 fisheries in 135 nations and denied findings for at least one fishery in 46 of them. The practical point for an importer is not the headline count. It is that a denial attaches to a fishery, which is defined by country, gear type, target species and area, while CBP enforces at the level of country and HTS code, and those two ways of describing the same fish do not line up neatly.

That mismatch is the reason the certificate regime exists. CBP cannot tell from a tariff line whether a carton of tuna loins came from an approved longline fishery or a denied gillnet fishery in the same country. The Certification of Admissibility closes that gap by putting the exporting government on record, shipment by shipment, that the product did not come from the banned fishery.

What Changed on January 1, 2026

Before 2026 the comparability process ran mostly in the background. Nations submitted applications, NOAA reviewed them, and apart from the Upper Gulf of California restrictions on Mexican fisheries, importers could buy from any fishery that was otherwise admissible. Since January 1, 2026 the result of that review is enforced at entry. Fish and fish products from a fishery with a denied comparability finding are prohibited, and no certificate, bond or post-entry correction makes a prohibited product admissible.

Two categories now exist for every seafood line an importer brings in. The first is product that comes from a denied fishery: it cannot enter. The second is product that comes from an approved fishery but shares its country and HTS code with a denied one: it can enter, but only with a Certification of Admissibility. Everything outside those two categories clears under the ordinary seafood rules. The compliance work is in sorting each purchase order into the right category before it ships, because the sorting is much harder to do once the container is sitting at the terminal.

The rule is also not frozen. NOAA published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking at 91 FR 47798, with comments due September 28, 2026. An advance notice changes nothing at the border today, but it signals that the framework is under review, and importers with exposure to affected countries should follow what comes out of it rather than treat the current list as permanent.

The list also moves between rulemakings. NMFS issued new comparability findings in 2026 for fisheries in New Zealand, New Caledonia, Grenada, Ireland, Suriname and for swimming crab from Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, so screening has to run against NOAA’s current list, not the September 2025 notice alone.

How the Certification of Admissibility Works

The Certification of Admissibility, usually shortened to COA, has three features that shape how importers have to manage it. It is signed by an authorized official of the harvesting or exporting nation, not by the exporter or the processor. It is specific to one shipment, so a certificate cannot be reused across bookings or issued once for a season. And it is filed by uploading it to CBP’s Document Imaging System (DIS) as part of the entry, which is how CBP and NOAA see it before release. CBP set out the filing mechanics in CSMS #67590021. The importer of record must also sign the final certification and submit it through DIS within 24 hours after release, if that was not done before release.

Each of those features moves work upstream. Because a government official has to sign, the supplier cannot produce the certificate on demand at the last minute; the request has to go through whatever channel the exporting nation uses, on that nation’s timeline. Because the certificate is shipment-specific, the details on it have to match the commercial invoice and the entry. Because it goes through DIS, the broker needs a legible copy in hand before the entry is transmitted, not a promise that the original is in the courier pouch.

The most common failure is not a fraudulent certificate. It is a missing one on a product the importer never realized was affected, because the buyer checked the fishery against the denied list, found it approved, and stopped there. An approved fishery is exactly the case where the COA is needed if another fishery in the same country, under the same HTS code, was denied.

Why a shared HTS code pulls in approved product

HTS codes for fish are built around species and product form, fresh, frozen, fillets, prepared or preserved, not around the gear that caught the fish. A single subheading for a frozen species can cover product from several fisheries in the same country. When one of them is denied, every entry under that country and subheading has to prove it is not from the denied one. That is why accurate HTS classification is the starting point for MMPA screening: a wrong subheading can either create a certificate requirement that did not exist or hide one that did.

Screening Every Seafood Line Against the Denied List

The screening that works is done per SKU, not per supplier. For each item, the importer needs the country of harvest, the species, the gear type and the fishing area from the supplier, and the HTS code from the classification record. Those facts are then matched twice: once against the denied fisheries to rule out prohibited product, and once against the country and HTS combinations that carry a certificate requirement.

The output should be a simple status on the item master: prohibited, COA required, or clear. Buyers see it before a purchase order is placed, logistics sees it before a booking is confirmed, and the broker sees it before the entry is prepared. An item that changes supplier, gear type or processing country goes back through the screen, because any of those changes can move it between categories.

Supplier declarations matter here, but they are an input, not a defense. The legal consequence of a prohibited entry falls on the importer of record, and the importer is expected to know what it is buying. Build the screening into the same trade compliance management program that already handles other agency requirements, so MMPA status is reviewed on the same cycle as classification and origin rather than as a one-off exercise done in January.

• Collect country of harvest, species, gear type and fishing area for every seafood SKU.
• Confirm the HTS code at the 10-digit level before screening.
• Match against denied fisheries first, then against country and HTS combinations that trigger a COA.
• Record the result on the item master and re-screen whenever supplier, gear or processing country changes.

The SIMP Overlay on the Same Entry

The MMPA rules sit on top of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program, which has not changed in 2025 or 2026. SIMP covers 13 species groups and requires the importer of record to hold an International Fisheries Trade Permit (IFTP) and to report harvest and landing data at entry, with the supporting chain-of-custody records kept available for audit.

The two programs ask different questions. SIMP asks where and how the fish was harvested and whether the importer can trace it; the MMPA rules ask whether the fishery it came from is allowed to export to the United States at all. The data overlap, since both depend on species, area and gear, which is an argument for collecting it once and using it for both. A SIMP filing does not substitute for a COA, and a COA does not satisfy SIMP.

Importers who already run clean SIMP files have most of the information needed for MMPA screening. Importers who only file SIMP data because the broker asks for it at entry usually do not, and they are the ones most likely to be surprised by a certificate requirement.

Entry Data and Documents Your Broker Needs Before Arrival

A seafood entry in an affected country and HTS combination now depends on documents that originate with a foreign government, which means the broker’s cut-off has to move earlier. The file should be complete before the vessel sails or the flight departs, not when the arrival notice comes in.

The minimum set is the commercial invoice and packing list with species and product form, the confirmed HTS code, the MMPA screening status for each line, the Certification of Admissibility where required, and the SIMP data and IFTP number where the species group is covered. Where FDA requirements also apply, those run in parallel and are not affected by the MMPA rules. A licensed customs brokerage team handling the entry uploads the COA through DIS, checks that it matches the invoice line by line, and flags discrepancies before transmission, when the supplier can still correct them.

Discrepancies on the entry itself flow into the CBP Form 7501, and a mismatch between the summary and the certificate is the kind of inconsistency that turns a document review into a hold. Getting the description, quantity and HTS code aligned across invoice, certificate and entry summary is routine work, but it has to be done every time because each certificate covers only one shipment.

When a Seafood Shipment Is Held for a Missing COA

A hold on an MMPA seafood import line usually means one of three things: the certificate was required and not filed, it was filed but does not match the entry, or the product appears to come from a denied fishery. The first two are documentation problems that can often be fixed if the exporting government issues or corrects the certificate. The third is a prohibition, and the realistic options narrow to export or destruction under CBP supervision.

Time matters in every case because the product is perishable and storage charges accumulate. The response should start the day the hold is posted: confirm what CBP or NOAA is asking for, contact the supplier to start the government certificate process, and assess whether the product can be re-exported to another market if the certificate cannot be obtained. Terminal storage and reefer plug-in charges keep running while the certificate is sourced, so the decision to wait for a corrected COA or to re-export should be made on numbers, not hope.

The pattern across these cases is that the problem was visible before the shipment left. A certificate requirement is determined by country and HTS code, both of which are known at the purchase order stage. Treating MMPA status the way importers already treat other restricted imports, as a pre-shipment gate rather than a post-arrival surprise, removes most of the exposure.

What Large Seafood Importers Should Do Now

Start with a full screen of the current seafood catalog against the denied fisheries and the certificate-triggering country and HTS combinations. For each supplier in an affected country, confirm who in the exporting government issues the certificate and how long it takes, and write that lead time into the booking calendar.

Next, align the broker’s document cut-off with the certificate process, and make sure the COA, SIMP data and invoice are reconciled before the entry is filed. Finally, assign someone to follow the rulemaking that the July 2026 advance notice opened (comments closed September 28, 2026), because changes to the findings or the certificate process will change which lines need attention.

Importers moving product for retail and foodservice programs can see how these controls fit alongside the rest of their inbound flow on our food and beverage logistics page, and the customs compliance platform keeps item-level status such as MMPA screening visible to buyers and logistics teams before a purchase order turns into a booking.

Frequently Asked Questions