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DOLPHIN-SAFE TUNA
On December 31, 2002 the Secretary of Commerce made a long-delayed determination that current practices by which tuna fishermen from Latin American countries find tuna by encircling and netting dolphins posed “no significant adverse impact” for dolphin populations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Given this finding, the United States would now allow the import of tuna caught by these methods, primarily from Mexico, Venezuela, and some other South American countries, so long as no dolphins were observed by observers aboard the boats to have been killed. Under these rules, US consumers would soon see a new label certifying that canned tuna is “dolphin-safe” under these new regulations.
The response of environmental and animal welfare organizations was sharp and swift. Earth Island Institute, the Humane Society of the US, and several other organizations immediately brought suit against the Secretary of Commerce, alleging that a number of sound scientific studies, including some from within the Commerce Department (National Marine Fisheries Service) itself, have found that constant chasing, encirclement, and netting of dolphins in the tuna fishery indeed causes great stress to the animals, injuring many who may eventually die, and separating mothers from calves. Even in the absence of “observed” deaths, this practice may well serve to explain why populations of several species of dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific have failed to recover to anything like their former levels. The US Marine Mammal Commission also advised in an October 2002 letter to the Secretary that the “practice of chasing and encircling dolphins is having adverse effects on the recovery of depleted dolphin stocks and that the magnitude of those effects, at both the individual and population levels, may be significant.”
Threatened with a temporary restraining order, attorneys for the government agreed to negotiate with the plaintiffs an arrangement under which enforcement of the new regulations until early March, when a federal judge will hear arguments for and against a preliminary injunction.
Senator Barbara Boxer, outraged by the government’s action, has said she will introduce legislation to overturn the new definition, which she described as “false advertising,” leaving consumers with no assurance that dolphins have not been killed and injured in obtaining the tuna they buy.
The three major US tuna canning companies—Starkist, Bumblebee, and Chicken of the Sea—have been supportive throughout of the original dolphin-safe definition, and they have pledged to continue for now to buy only tuna that has been caught without the encirclement of dolphins.
Although Sierra Club is not a party to the current suit against the Secretary of Commerce (we have been co-plaintiffs on this issue in the past), we support and are cooperating with the organizations that have brought the suit. The chances of a successful ruling for the plaintiffs are good. The science is on our side. But a favorable decision in this court case is not likely to resolve the issue for good. The countries which have resisted changing their tuna fishing methods will not give up easily, and they have threatened in the past to take the dispute to WTO. The Bush administration and State Department are likely to support Mexico, rather than US consumers and the dolphins.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Take action!
- urge your Senators to co-sponsor and actively support Senator Boxer’s legislation to restore our confidence in the dolphin-safe label. And write or call your Member of Congress to tell them to join the fight.
- for now, you can continue to buy canned tuna produced by Starkist, Bumblebee, and Chicken of the Sea with confidence. If that changes, we will let you know.
- stay informed. Sierra Club members can join the Marine Mammal Forum, an e-mail listserve that provides good press articles, commentary, and other information on dolphin safe tuna and many other issues affecting whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals. Click here to join the list
Links
Earth Island Institute -
International Marine Mammal Project
We work to make oceans safe for marine mammals worldwide. We strive to
eliminate dolphin mortality caused by the international tuna fishing
industry, to end the use of driftnets, and to stop tuna purse-seine fishers
from encircling dolphins in their nets. In addition, we aim to stop the
resumption of commercial whaling worldwide, to promote sustainable fishing,
and to protect the habitat of whales, dolphins, and other marine species.
The Humane Society
The Humane Society of the United States makes a difference in the lives of
animals here at home and worldwide. The HSUS is dedicated to creating a
world where our relationship with animals is guided by compassion. We seek a
truly humane society in which animals are respected for their intrinsic
value, and where the human-animal bond is strong.
National Marine Fisheries Service
Final Report Summary
The many background science reports that went into the
National Marine Fisheries Service final Report summary have finally
been posted online by NMFS. These include background research papers on
stress, population surveys and abundance estimates, and ecological studies
of the Eastern Tropical Pacific.You can access the list and download all the
papers (as pdf files).
SOME HISTORY
Sierra Club was part of a large group of conservation and animal welfare
organizations that in the 1970s and 1980s fought for, and won, the
dolphin-safe tuna label that by 1990 guaranteed consumers that no tuna sold
in the United States had been caught by setting nets on dolphins. So
successful was the new label in protecting dolphin populations in the ETP
that observed deaths in the fishery dropped from 100,000 per year to fewer
than 3,000 in the late 1990s.
However, in the mid-1990s, Mexico and several other countries whose tuna was largely excluded from the US market threatened to take what they called an unwarranted restraint on trade to the WTO. The US Government then agreed to negotiate new international dolphin-safe regulations under the framework of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Convention (IATTC). A preliminary agreement—the Panama Declaration—was reached in 1995 in which the US Government agreed to amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act to meet Latin American concerns. The US Congress passed legislation, the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act (IDCPA), to implement the agreement in August 1997, and eight nations signed the agreement in 1998.
The new regime called for a system of observers to certify that no dolphins were observed to be killed or seriously injured in any particular fishing operation, followed by a system of paper certifications to accompany separate packages of tuna all the way to market to distinguish “dolphin-safe” from “non-dolphin-safe” tuna. The regulations drafted to make this system work were complex and difficult to implement, all too open to abuse or corruption. The IDCPA passed by the US Congress required the National Marine Fisheries Service to conduct research on the effects of repeated chase and encirclement on dolphins to provide data for a finding by the Secretary of Commerce that this practice did not have an adverse impact on dolphin populations in the ETP. Commerce dragged its heels on conducting such research, but the Secretary’s announcement of December 31, 2002 was the result of the series of population estimates and stress research projects that finally were done.
For more information: Judy Olmer, Chair, Marine Mammals Working Group
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