A U.S. judge this week ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the law when it failed to develop a plan to prevent the harming of humpback whales by West Coast commercial fishermen catching sablefish.
The Endangered Species Act requires the fisheries service to develop a plan to reduce the number of whales accidentally injured or killed by the fishery, but the agency neither crafted such a plan nor started to create one, the ruling said.
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