Please Pass the ‘Dolphin Safe’ Tuna

The decision Thursday by America’s three largest purveyors of canned tuna not to purchase fish caught in nets that also trap and kill dolphins represents more than a victory for conservationists concerned with protecting marine mammals. It also signals, in a dramatic fashion, that consumers’ willingness to vote their environmental convictions at the cash register has become a powerful force for good in the global economy.

As many as 100,000 of the highly intelligent dolphins are killed in the eastern Pacific each year by fishermen in pursuit of yellowfin tuna, most of which is canned and sold in the United States. Because schools of dolphin and mature tuna swim together--the air-breathing mammals on the surface, the fish below--fishermen sight the dophins and surround them with circular nets, called purse seines. As the nets are drawn in, dolphins, as well as tuna, often are trapped. The mammals drown if they are held too long beneath the surface. American fishermen, whose conduct is regulated by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and whose boats carry federal observers, kill fewer than 20,000 dolphins each year. The other 80,000 or so are netted by foreign fishermen, mostly Latin Americans. Only about 30% of their craft carry U.S. inspectors, and environmentalists have criticized the National Marine Fisheries Service for its lack of vigor in monitoring non-American fishermen, most of whose catch ultimately is sold here.

The decision by H.J. Heinz, parent company of Star-Kist, and the Van Camp Seafood company, which markets Chicken of the Sea, and Bumble Bee Seafoods Inc. means that 70% of the tuna sold in this country can now be labeled “dolphin safe.”

Heinz’s Irish-born chairman, Anthony J. F. O’Reilly, said that his company simply was responding to consumer concern and expected the decision actually to increase tuna sales, even though the price will increase a few cents per can. He said his firm would not only continue its current policy of refusing to purchase albacore tuna caught in highly destructive drift nets, but also actively support pending federal legislation to require any tuna caught in nets that kill marine mammals to be labeled “dolphin unsafe.”

Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., one sponsor of the bill, called the companies’ action “one hell of a sound business decision.” So it is, and, as such, it marks the end of the era in which some folks in the board room thought good business and good environmental policy were mutually exclusive.