The WTO rules against “dolphin-safe” labels on tuna
I wasn&#x27;t expecting to see so much approval of dolphin-safe fishing from the Sierra Club...<p>Compare <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.southernfriedscience.com&#x2F;?p=6539" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.southernfriedscience.com&#x2F;?p=6539</a> (a marine biology blog), which I&#x27;ll quote from at length:<p>&gt; It can be difficult for people who have never seen it in action to appreciate the scale of modern commercial fisheries. Commercial fishermen aren’t out on the high seas with handheld rods and reels catching one fish at a time. The nets that tuna fishermen use, which are called purse seines, are miles long. With a net that size, it’s pretty much impossible to catch only tuna. Those nets also catch anything that happens to be swimming near the tuna. These unfortunate animals, killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are called bycatch.<p>&gt; There are three ways that tuna schools can be located. The first is to search for them directly using surface ships and small aircraft, which is inefficient, time-consuming, and not always effective (you can’t see tuna from the surface if they’re deep enough or if weather conditions aren’t ideal). The second is to attract tuna using floating objects, which we’ll discuss in more detail shortly. The third is to follow dolphins- for unknown reasons, dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific are often found associated with schools of large tuna.<p>&gt; Because finding dolphin-associated schools of tuna was extremely easy (unlike tuna, dolphins have to return to the surface where they are easy to  spot), it was the preferred method for decades. The Eastern Tropical Pacific Tuna Fishery had a high rate of dolphin bycatch. According to NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Service Center, an estimated six million dolphins were killed during the forty or so years that purse seining around dolphin-associated tuna schools took place. That’s approximately 150,000 dolphins per year, which is by far the largest cetacean bycatch of any fishery in history. However, it is important to note that mortality from being tuna bycatch did not mean that dolphins were endangered. The two primary species involved are spinner dolphins (data deficient) and spotted dolphins (least concern).<p>&gt; A massive PR campaign led by the Earth Island Institute resulted in making it illegal to sell tuna caught from dolphin-associated schools in the United States. Dolphin-safe tuna was born.<p>&gt; Now that fishermen could no longer use what was previously the most common method for catching tuna, they needed to change strategies. They turned to using floating objects (sometimes called FAD’s or fish aggregating devices) to attract tuna to a known location. One of the strangest known behaviors exhibited by open-ocean animals is their tendency to aggregate around any solid object that floats. This might have something to do with the fact that many open-ocean animals go their entire lives without seeing any sort of hard surface. This method is extremely effective for aggregating tuna, but it also aggregates many other species. Setting a purse seine around a dolphin-associated tuna school results in catching primarily large adult tuna (the target size because they have more meat per unit effort and because they have reproduced already) and dolphins (which are not endangered) . Setting a purse seine around a floating object results in all sorts of bycatch, including endangered sea turtles, open ocean shark species which are already in serious trouble, and high numbers of small tuna (which have not yet reproduced).<p>&gt; A simple glance at the table above shows that while dolphins bycatch goes down, every other studied species (except “unidentified bony fishes”, “other sailfishes”, and marlins) has much higher bycatch rates in “floating object” tuna fishing than in “dolphin associated” tuna fishing. In other words, while better for dolphins, “dolphin-safe” tuna is disastrous for almost everything else.<p>&gt; If you do the math on this (and you don’t have to because the Environmental Justice Foundation already did), you find that one saved dolphin costs 25,824 small tuna, 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks and rays, 1 billfish, 1,193 triggerfish and other small fish, and 0.06 sea turtles.<p>&gt; Last summer, I went on NPR’s “The Pat Morrison Show” to discuss this issue with a representative from the Earth Island Institute, the organization most responsible for dolphin-safe tuna policies. I had expected him to acknowledge that the bycatch was a problem, but that it was still important to protect dolphins because they’re intelligent mammals (or something like that). Instead, he argued that there was no bycatch of endangered species taking place under dolphin safe tuna policies, and he accused me of perpetuating the propaganda of evil fishermen who “just want to kill dolphins”. Yikes.<p>&gt; A conscious choice to go back to a previously-banned fishing method that kills large numbers of charismatic animals puts a bad taste in my mouth, but the fact is that fishing for dolphin-associated schools of tuna catches primarily non-endangered dolphins and adult tuna. Dolphin-safe tuna fishing is killing dozens of species, many of whom are endangered, and threatening the integrity of entire ecosystems.<p>Dolphin-safe tuna might be the most straightforward example in the world of political posturing for its own sake, <i>in direct opposition to the avowed goals of the organizations that support it</i>. And here&#x27;s the Sierra Club decrying a step towards clawing it back.