Evans

The National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) is charged with implementing a licensing program to prevent overfishing of Pacific cod in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (“BSAI”) groundfish fishery. The NMFS decided to limit the number of boats fishing in the BSAI fishery by granting licenses only to boats that, caught a prescribed amount of fish during any two years between 1995-1998. The F/V Blue North caught the requisite amount of fish in 1997 and 1999, but not in the other qualifying years of 1995-96 or 1998. Had the NMFS included 1999 as a qualifying year, the F/V Blue North would have qualified to secure a license to fish for Pacific cod in the BSAI fishery. "

Yakutat, Inc. is the owner of the F/V Blue North. It brought this action to challenge the NMFS’s failure to include 1999 as a qualifying year. Yakutat argues that the NMFS’s decision is unfair and inequitable under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (“Magnuson Act”), 16 U.S.C. §§ 1801 et seq., and is arbitrary and capricious, lacking a rational basis under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §§ 501 et seq. The district court upheld the decision of the Secretary of Commerce…