By Pip Hinman
On most supermarket shelves these days, tuna cans are marked as "dolphin safe". For the unsuspecting consumer, the purchase of this item is preferable to those that are unmarked, which consumers rightly suspect to be the product of destructive practices of the big tuna fishing companies.
"'Dolphin safe' is a PR ploy used by the powerful tuna industry that encourages reckless, uncontrolled fishing in most of the world's oceans and contributes to the growing global fisheries crisis," according to Traci Romine of Greenpeace. A program by tuna corporations to label canned tuna "dolphin safe" may have begun with good intentions, but has been manipulated into a sophisticated public relations "greenwash" campaign to mislead consumers, Greenpeace argues.
In a report issued last month titled, "In the Race for Tuna, Dolphins Aren't the Only Sacrifice", Greenpeace exposes the global environmental destruction to a vast array of marine creatures, including dolphins, that is caused by the unregulated and uncontrolled worldwide commercial tuna fishing fleets. The report, which sets forth a far-reaching package of reforms for the tuna industry, comes in the midst of a major United Nations conference on the crisis in the world's fisheries.
"Companies are exploiting the public concern for dolphins, without supporting the meaningful reforms necessary to rectify destructive tuna fishing practices on the world's oceans," commented Romine.
According to the report, commercial tuna fishing, as it is currently being practised around the world, is part of a destructive trend in industrialised fishing — a trend that is contributing to the global destruction of marine life, the environment and human coastal communities.
Based upon research of tuna fishing in all of the world's tropical oceans, the report explains how purse seine fishing practices are used to target tuna, but also net — and kill — dolphins, whales and sharks in the process. Kilometre and a half-long tuna nets set on objects floating in the ocean can capture up to 40 other types of marine species in one set, most of which are then discarded.
In only one case has this rapacious industry been brought to public scrutiny: That of the plight of dolphins caught and killed in tuna nets in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. This attention forced the countries involved — the United States, Mexico and other Latin American and South Pacific nations — to develop an international program to control the Eastern Pacific fishery.
As the Greenpeace report shows, dolphins and a host of marine creatures are still dying in tuna nets in alarming numbers, and that the term "dolphin safe" does not mean environmentally safe. Dolphins are, in fact, only one of the hundreds of species including sharks, and sea birds at risk from commercial tuna fishing nets. Bycatch of non-tuna species is wasteful and
destructive to the marine environment. In addition, juvenile tuna are now being caught and thrown over as waste at an ever-increasing rate.
"Dolphin safe" labelling of tuna cans is misleading for another reason: No regulations exist to require independent monitors to verify that tuna is caught in a dolphin-safe manner. What monitoring does occur has proved difficult and imprecise, with vessel inspections taking place primarily on land, not at sea.
"Tuna are a global species ... crossing entire oceans in a matter of months," the report says. "Tuna fleets are global. Tuna money is global. Tuna management is not global. Unfortunately, tuna fishing is managed, where it is managed at all, in a fragmented and parochial manner, with little formal information exchange among the various
management institutions."
Greenpeace concludes that global action is urgently needed to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the industry. The industry needs to be made internationally accountable both to the public and a global fishing management regime based on scientific stock assessments.