Ironically, their foreign successors in the eastern Pacific have
embraced the dolphin conservation methods that California skippers
pioneered but were forbidden to use. In doing so, they have reduced
dolphin mortalities to levels that eliminate any threat to the mammals
growing populations, surpassing the standards that domestic U.S. fleets
must meet. Yet their catch is still embargoed from American markets,
and American tuna seiners are still barred from using the successful
methods -- which would enable them to come home. Meanwhile, the
dolphin safe label can be used on fish that is caught by far dirtier
fisheries which take a much higher ecological toll on marine life,
sometimes including dolphins.
Now Congress is considering legislation to straighten out this mess.
Leading conservation groups and the Clinton administration support the
change. But powerful animal rights organizations, using Hollywood
spokesmen and Free Willy symbolism, are working to block this effort
because it would allow seiners once again to use a fishing method they
abhor: encirclement and release of dolphins to capture the prized
yellowfin tuna that follow them. These mistaken saviors are pushing
their own legislation which would continue the rules that have done so
much damage already to fishermen and to fisheries conservation and
management. If you fish, this fight is your fight.
If such failed conservation regimes are allowed to stand, no fishery
is safe. Moreover, many Americans still mistakenly believe that the
nation s dolphin safe policies and product labels worked. That
ignorant view lends support to other crude and costly adventures in
eco-labeling. If eco-labeling is ever going to succeed (either for
marine ecosystems or humans who harvest food from them) it will require
a much better grasp of how fisheries actually work.
Eco-labeling is now spreading to other fisheries. The main eco-activist
group behind the dolphin safe disaster has spawned a turtle safe
shrimp campaign. In a separate (and hopefully smarter) effort, World
Wildlife Fund and Unilever, a $50-billion a year multinational are
promoting worldwide councils to define and label sustainable fisheries
and disrupt sales of identified eco-underachievers.
Before we move on to new labels of sustainability, let s fix what went
wrong with dolphin safe, the first and the dirtiest of the eco-labels.
The International Dolphin Conservation Program Act (IDCPA, S.1420,
H.R.2823), introduced by Senator Breaux and Congressman Gilchrest,
strengthens the dolphin safe label to mean what it says. It also
builds on the achievements of foreign fishermen who participate in the
successful dolphin conservation under the Inter-American Tropical Tuna
Commission s (IATTC), by lifting U.S. embargoes for participating
countries.
Under this program, eastern Pacific tuna fishermen reduced dolphin
mortalities from a peak of 134,000 in 1986 to below 4,000, or 0.04
percent of the 10 million dolphins present in this 8-million-square-mile
tuna fishery. Little of this fishery s 300,000 tons of tuna can be sold
as dolphin safe because the present definition allows only tuna that is
caught without encircling dolphins during the entire fishing trip.
Eastern Pacific fishermen, who catch large tunas associating with
dolphins, will never get the label. Ironically, they receive the label
if they abandon the area or substitute any nonencircling-type gear, even
if those choices cause massive dolphin losses or unsustainable bycatch
of fish and other creatures.
The IDCPA addresses this debacle, redefining dolphin safe to a
set-by-set performance-based standard verified by on-board observers.
Fish from sets where 100 percent of the encircled dolphins are released
unharmed will qualify as dolphin safe, a gold star for perfect
performance. This ensures consumers that no dolphins died in production
of the tuna and supports fishermen in dolphin-release efforts. It also
allows the harvest of clean schools of very large tunas, keeping the
fishery healthy.
The bill would correct another problem in present U.S. policy as well.
Based on the flawed concept that there are 10 million marine mammals in
the eastern Pacific and none anywhere else in the world, the dolphin
safe label is presently given to fishermen in other oceans who operate
under barely any scrutiny or enforcement. The effect? They must hide
their marine mammal kills -- instead of seeking help to reduce them --
or be blacklisted.
Trying to comply with the current no encirclement policy, some
skippers fish on immature tunas, which associate less with dolphins. If
the entire fleet were to fish this way, yellowfin production could be
reduced by as much as 60 percent. And because small tunas associate
with a variety of other fish, sharks, billfish and turtles, the discards
at sea increase from 0.1 percent of the catch for fishing on
dolphin-associated mature tunas to 20 to 30 percent of the catch for
fishing on non-dolphin-associated baby tunas.
While other fisheries work to reduce bycatch, dolphin safe mandates
eastern Pacific fishermen to dramatically increase bycatch and impact
juvenile tunas in order to avoid a biologically insignificant impact on
dolphin stocks.
The U.S. tuna seine fleet is a small community, no match for the
powerful media players who oppose the IDCPA. Fortunately, a diverse
group of allies has stepped in. They include Alliance for America,
American Sportfishing Association, Center for Marine Conservation,
Defenders of Property Rights, Greenpeace, National Fisheries Institute,
People for the West, Seafarers International Union, Western States
Coalition, World Wildlife Fund, many other groups and the governments
and tuna industries of twelve countries.
Still, U.S. commercial fishermen have too much at stake to stay silent
as this bill is debated. If the Breaux-Gilchrest legislation passes,
U.S. vessels will fish sensibly again in the eastern Pacific and
fishermen everywhere will benefit.
We are all vulnerable to the same kind of final solution that hounded
the U.S. tuna fleet off the eastern Pacific. Your fishery could be
next. To survive, we all need laws that balance the needs of harvesters
with the complexities of ecosystem management and the concerns of an
aware and involved public. If eco-labeling is to be the law, let s make
sure the labels are friendly and fair to all -- fishermen, fish, Flipper
and the whole menagerie we meet at sea.