Dolphin Slaughter

Once again, The Times serves as the apologist for the destruction caused by the commercial tuna fishing fleet. Sunday’s Cousteau Watch column (Aug. 6) refers to tuna fleets that “kill ocean-going dolphins by inadvertently catching them in purse-seine nets.” This could not be farther from the truth.

The international tuna industry deliberately sets these highly destructive nets on schools of dolphin to trap the tuna swimming below. There have been documented cases in which thousands of these gentle and graceful creatures have been killed to net a handful of yellowfin.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act has gone virtually unenforced through both Democratic and Republican administrations. Observers on U.S. ships are regularly harassed, and there are no provisions to observe foreign flag vessels which comprise the bulk of the fleet. Dolphins, in the meantime, are being eradicated in certain coastal waters.

Your article quotes nearly 2 million killed in our own coastal Pacific waters since the act passed in 1972. These “official” figures are provided by none other than the tuna industry. They do not take into account under-reporting (by some estimates by as much as 100%) and the untold millions of mangled and near-drowned victims released to a certain death. The disruption of these intelligent creatures’ social order once set upon by the tuna nets compounds the disaster by allowing ever-present predators to finish the destruction.

The fishing industry remains the last great industrial hunter of wild animals in their natural habitat. One by one, industrial hunting has endangered or destroyed important species: whales, seals and sea lions, elephants, buffalo, alligators, wild dogs, and on and on. The MMLA has good intentions but does not go far enough to protect the remaining cetacean wildlife from destruction, especially when enforcement is non-existent.

BRIAN McMAHON

Toluca Lake