Dolphin-safe tuna

DEFINITION: Commercially produced food products containing tuna fish caught using methods that minimize dolphin mortality

In the mid-twentieth century, massive numbers of dolphins died in tuna nets. Concerns regarding the magnitude of the dolphin mortality led to the concept of dolphin-safe tuna, and laws, standards, and industry practices were established with the intent of protecting dolphins during tuna fishing.

The eastern tropical Pacific tuna fishery covers the ocean from California to Hawaii and south to the equator and Chile. Dolphins and yellowfin tuna frequently feed in the same areas within this region. During the mid-twentieth century, the tuna fishing industry adopted the practice of locating schools of tuna by spotting associated dolphin populations. Dolphins are mammals and must remain near the surface in order to breathe. The tuna fishing industry exploited this knowledge, using dolphins to locate yellowfin tuna swimming below the surface. During the late 1950s technological developments enabled fishing boats that had been limited to catching individual tuna with poles and lines to capture entire schools of the fish in purse-seine nets. It became common industry practice to encircle dolphin schools with huge purse seines in order to capture the associated tuna schools. Dolphins and tuna together were herded with speedboats and helicopters into the nets. The dolphins, of no commercial value to the tuna fishing industry, were sometimes released alive, but often they became entangled in the nets and drowned.

By the early 1970s, the number of dolphins killed annually in the eastern Pacific Ocean had risen to more than 300,000. A 2022 estimate by the International Marine Mammal Project placed the number of dolphins killed by tuna fishing since the 1950s at more than 8 million.

Public awareness of the plight of the dolphins began as early as the mid-1960’s, leading to the 1972 passage of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Intended to prevent exploitation of dolphins and related aquatic animals, the act limited the number of dolphins that could be killed annually to 20,500. Unsatisfied, conservationists and animal rights activists pushed for a tuna boycott, a move that succeeded largely because of the widespread popularity of dolphins. By 1977 annual dolphin deaths in purse seines had declined to about 25,450. The respite was brief, however: As US fishing fleets declined during the early 1980s, foreign vessels began to enter the eastern Pacific fishery. This led to an increase in dolphin mortality; by 1986, the numbers had risen to 133,000 deaths per year.

In 1990 declining sales and concern about public opinion led the three major canners of tuna sold in the United States to stop buying tuna that had been caught through the intentional setting of nets around dolphins. At the same time, much of the US tuna fishing fleet moved into the western tropical Pacific Ocean, where tuna and dolphin do not habitually swim in the same waters. In November 1990, the United States enacted the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act (DPCIA), which set conditions for protecting dolphins during purse-seine tuna fishing but included few provisions for enforcement. In 1994 provisions of the 1992 US International Dolphin Conservation Act went into effect. Under the act, only dolphin-safe tuna—tuna caught using methods that do not involve chasing, encircling, or killing dolphins—could be sold in the United States, the country constituting the largest market for canned tuna.

Critics of the legislation claimed that canneries were simply using the term “dolphin-safe” as a marketing tool and that use of the term was no true guarantee of dolphin-friendly fishing practices. Criticism escalated after the MMPA was amended by the 1997 International Dolphin Conservation Act (IDCA), which redefined the dolphin-safe label. Under the new, looser guidelines, dolphins could be caught in nets as long as they were not physically harmed. An individual dolphin could thus legally be chased, captured, and released many times during its life.

In 1999, by which time reported dolphin had fallen to fewer than 3,000 per year, the Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program (AIDCP) went into effect. This binding document, which replaced a voluntary international program established during the early 1990s, adopted most of the IDCA’s provisions. Over the next decade the United States, the European Union, and eleven other major fishing countries ratified or acceded to the AIDCP.

A 2004 decision in a lawsuit filed by the Earth Island Institute, the US Humane Society, and other organizations restored the original definition of “dolphin-safe” for tuna sold in the United States. Tuna caught through methods that involve chasing, encircling, and capturing dolphins without physically harming them can legally be sold in the United States but cannot be labeled dolphin-safe. By 2008, according to figures from the NOAA Fisheries Service, the number of dolphins captured unintentionally by the tuna industry had been reduced to an estimated 1,000 per year. In 2020, the number of dolphins captured dropped to 689 total.

Bibliography

Bonanno, Alessandro, and Douglas Constance. Caught in the Net: The Global Tuna Industry, Environmentalism, and the State. UP of Kansas, 1996.

"Frequent Questions: Dolphin Safe." NOAA Fisheries, 2 Aug. 2023, www.fisheries.noaa.gov/marine-mammal-protection/frequent-questions-dolphin-safe. Accessed 16 July 2024.

Kennelly, Steven J., and Matt K. Broadhurst. “By-Catch Begone: Changes in the Philosophy of Fishing Technology.” Fish and Fisheries 3, no. 4 (2002): 340-355.

Minke-Martin, Vanessa. "In Graphic Detail: Solving Tuna's Dolphin By-catch Problem." Hakai Magazine, 18 Mar. 2022, hakaimagazine.com/videos-visuals/in-graphic-detail-solving-tunas-dolphin-bycatch-problem/. Accessed 16 July 2024.

White, Thomas I. In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier. Blackwell, 2007.