The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has ordered the dismissal of a defamation suit that Maine lobster businesses and two fishermen's associations brought against the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation. The suit targeted the foundation's Seafood Watch program, which tells consumers and companies which seafood to buy and which to avoid. In its October 9 opinion, a three-judge panel reversed a 2025 district court ruling that had let the case go forward.
The dispute began in September 2022, when Seafood Watch moved American lobster caught by trap in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank from yellow, its "Good Alternative" rating, to red, or "Avoid." Its September 6, 2022 assessment cited risks to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and found the measures meant to reduce entanglement in fishing gear insufficient. The plaintiffs, who sued in 2023, disputed that science and pointed to gear changes the industry has made to protect whales.
A Red Rating With a Price Tag
The complaint, as summarized in the opinion, described what the downgrade cost. Bug Catcher, Inc., one of the plaintiffs, estimated it lost about 20% of its business after the red rating. Some of the plaintiffs' customers specifically cited the Seafood Watch report when they stopped buying Gulf of Maine lobster. At this stage the court accepted those allegations as true for purposes of the motion to dismiss, which is not the same as finding the losses proven.
If proven, losses like those would show how far a single fishery-wide rating can travel. The rating was aimed at gear in the water, yet the alleged damage arrived through customers' purchasing decisions.
Too Many Lobstermen to Single Anyone Out
The case turned on Maine's group defamation rule. A statement about a large group generally cannot support a suit by one member unless it makes a particular reference to that person, and the court counted about 5,600 lobstermen in Maine alone. A criticism that applies equally to everyone in the fishery does not single out any one business, the panel held, even if customers cited it when they walked away. The judges did not decide whether Seafood Watch's conclusions about right whales were correct, and they noted that a looser reading of the rule could chill speech on public issues.
Buyers Still Own Their Sourcing Rules
The ruling settles who can sue over a rating. It does not validate the rating. Companies that tie purchasing to Seafood Watch or similar scorecards are still responsible for how they apply it, including which fishery, gear type and assessment date a rule covers. A policy that says "no red-rated lobster" without those details can sweep in suppliers the assessment never examined. Procurement teams already treat that kind of exposure as part of risk that reaches beyond cost and continuity, and many now write data requirements into supplier contracts to pin down exactly what was sourced.
Suppliers, for their part, lose a legal route to challenge an industry-wide rating. Their recourse now runs through Seafood Watch's own reassessment process and through what they can document for buyers about gear and location, the kind of detail now landing in a broader reset of supplier contract terms. The plaintiffs can still ask the full First Circuit to rehear the case or petition the U.S. Supreme Court.
