Dolphins and Tuna - These are the Issues:

Source: High North News no. 9, Dec. 12 1994

Setting on Dolphins: In the Eastern Tropical Pacific tuna and dolphins seek each other’s company. The dolphins help the fishermen to spot the tuna and with their purse seines (nets) they encircle both the tuna and the dolphins. On the whole, this technique is only possible in this area.

Dolphin Mortality: Back in the sixties, seventies and early eighties, dolphin mortality rates in the purse seine fishery were shockingly high - more than a hundred thousand a year. Over the past 35 years, roughly 6 million dolphins of different species have died in the tuna nets. (Source: The US News & World Report)

International Cooperation - the Solution: The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), has been given the task of tackling this problem. They have introduced an inspection and observation scheme and, in cooperation with the fishermen, a programme for educating the fishermen and developing techniques and equipment for releasing the dolphins. This has been tremendously successful. Last year only 3609 dolphins were killed. According to the IATTC, this comprises only 0.04% of the estimated 9.6 million dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, and surpasses IATTC’s aims for reductions in dolphin mortality.

Not a Conservation Problem: All dolphin stocks affected by the Eastern Tropical Tuna Fisheries are expected to increase in the future, IATTC concluded. They no longer believe that the tuna fisheries pose a threat to the conservation of these dolphin stocks.

US Policy: Until 1992, US policy was to reduce dolphin mortality in the tuna fisheries of the Eastern Tropical Pacific to insignificant levels approaching zero. Then a new aim appeared: the total prohibition of encircling dolphins, a ban which came into force on March 1, 1994. This policy has not been agreed to by the IATTC.

Using the Trade Stick : The prohibition of encircling dolphins was followed by an embargo on all tuna products that originate form such fisheries. This ban also hits the nations that respect the dolphin conservation programme for the Eastern Tropical Pacific - agreed upon by the IATTC - where the US is also a member. Before their total ban on encircling dolphins came into effect, the US embargoed tuna products from the Eastern Tropical Pacific in cases where the number of dead dolphins per vessel was not comparable to that of the US fleet. This could not be decided on until the end of each year, when the dolphin mortality rate for the US fleet became known.

The GATT Conflict: It was this type of trade restrictions that left the exporting country completely in the dark regarding what the criteria for attaining import authorization would be, that Mexico protested against in 1991, by filing a formal complaint to the GATT. The GATT Panel ruled that a limitation of trade based on such unpredictable conditions could not be regarded as being primarily aimed at the conservation of dolphins, and that US import prohibitions on certain yellowfin tuna products were in violation of several GATT articles. Owing to the ongoing NAFTA negotiations, Mexico dropped the case, but it was brought back to the GATT Panel in August 1992 by the EU represented by the Netherlands. On May 20, 1994, the GATT Panel confirmed its ruling of the Mexico v. USA case.

The Dolphin Safe Label: In cooperation with environmental organisations, the major tuna canneries in the USA have introduced and marketed the Tuna Safe Label . The irony of it is that this label only serves to inform that the tuna has not been caught by encircling techniques. Dolphin Safe does not mean that no dolphins were killed. Data from fisheries in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and the Bay of Biscay, where other techniques are used, suggest that the number of dolphins killed per ton of tuna may be from 7 to 17 times higher in other fisheries than in those of the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

Dolphin Safe = Environmentally Unsound The techniques that are now used in the Eastern Tropical Pacific lead to a much higher discard of immature tuna and incidental catches like sharks, sea turtles and several species of fish than when the tuna and accompanying dolphins were encircled. What it boils down to is, what are we willing to sacrifice for a dolphin? asks Martin Hall of the IATTC.

A Rift in the Environmental Community: Greenpeace states that moving vessels (from a closely monitored fishery) to unregulated fisheries, is not a solution. It is a greenwash. (The US News and World Report: What Price a Dolphin?, June 3, 1994). The most aggressive defender of the US dolphin safe policy, Earth Island Institute, replies that: Greenpeace doesn’t give a damn about dolphins and never did.