While walking around the annual Festival of the Sea in Point Pleasant back in September – going tent-to-tent and stuffing food into my seafood-fest loving yap – I stumbled upon a rather unique menu offering under one particular sign which shall remain nameless. After snapping the pic, I posted to Instagram (@jimhutchinsonjr) asking if anyone noticed what’s wrong with the photo. Some folks found the $25 lobster roll a difficult pill to swallow, especially when washed down with a $3 plastic bottle of water. But more specifically I found the Local White Marlin Ceviche at $18 to be a rather surprising offering at a public seafood festival.
For the record, selling marlin in the continental United States is a violation of federal law. The Billfish Conservation Act of 2012 prohibits the sale of billfish and billfish products in the United States. The federal law exempted swordfish from this commercial billfish prohibition, while specifically designating black marlin, blue marlin, longbill spearfish, Mediterranean spearfish, sailfish, shortbill spearfish, striped marlin, and yes, local white marlin, as being not for sale from coast to coast.
In the first few years following passage of this federal law, certain artisanal fisheries in Hawaii or the Pacific Insular Areas (American Samoa and Guam for example) were still able to sell marlin commercially on the U.S. Mainland. However, a 2018 amendment to the federal Billfish Conservation Act closed this legal loophole, thereby prohibiting marlin caught in these Pacific Island areas from being shipped to the continental U.S. for sale. You can still find marlin and sailfish on seafood menus in Hawaii, but it’s prohibited anywhere else in the United States, including local seafood festivals.
Sure, if you have a hankering for White Marlin Ceviche, you can go catch and kill your own with the HMS Permit. As per the Billfish Conservation Act, individuals including recreational fishermen may possess white marlin that they caught legally while in possession of an HMS Permit, bthey just can’t sell that fish. In other words, federal law has made marlin a federal gamefish with no value to the commercial sector or American restaurants. If you see marlin ceviche on a local menu, it’s probably been poached!
As for fines associated with illegally selling white marlin at seafood festivals, fish markets or restaurants anywhere within the continental United States, that’s apparently up to a judge’s discretion. The law treats Billfish Conservation Act violations under Section 307 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which says any person found guilty of such a fishery violation shall be liable for a civil penalty not to exceed $100,000.
The law states that any billfish caught and landed by U.S. vessels must be sold and retained in Hawaii or the Pacific Insular Areas, and only foreign vessels landing in the Pacific Insular Areas are exempted from the prohibition and therefore allowed to export their marlin catches to non-U.S. markets. Therefore, it’s impossible to find local white marlin legally offered on any menu from New Jersey to California.
Some Instagram yahoo called me out as a “narc” for posting the image, but a few commercial fishermen I know were really ticked off – not for me sharing but angry at the restaurant for offering up a federally prohibited fish for sale to the public. And rather than burning down the entire orchard, sometimes a little self-policing within each of our sectors can go a long way towards eliminating bad apples.
To report a fisheries violation call Operation Game Thief at 855-OGT-TIPS (855-648-8477).
