Study Says Ban on Nets Can’t Save Dolphins
No “practical” alternative exists that would protect dolphins from drowning in the nets used by tuna fishermen off the Pacific coast, according to a four-year study released Thursday by the National Research Council.
The study, the most comprehensive government-sponsored analysis of the highly charged issue, found that better training for boat captains is the best way to reduce dolphin deaths, as opposed to outright bans on fishing methods such as the purse-seine nets, which resemble inverted umbrellas.
Environmentalists had hoped that the long-anticipated study would identify fishing methods that would protect dolphins while maintaining a healthy international tuna industry. Instead, the study concluded that there is no technology that could help achieve that balance.
“The only way to eliminate dolphin mortality is to stop purse-seining, which is the only commercially viable way of harvesting quantities of tuna to keep up the supply,” said Robert C. Francis, director of the Fisheries Research Institute at the University of Washington and chairman of the committee that issued the report.
Environmental groups immediately criticized the study. They have campaigned for two decades to ban purse-seine fishing in the eastern tropical Pacific, the immense corner of ocean where a quarter of the world’s tuna is harvested.
In that part of the Pacific, which runs from Mexico to Peru, dolphins swim along with yellowfin tuna, the most commercially lucrative species.
Dolphins, which unlike the tuna are air-breathing mammals, often drown or are injured when trapped with the fish in the giant nets.
“The hopes we had that this document would provide a blueprint from which we could direct either our government’s actions or research through the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (an industry group) have just gone up in smoke,” said marine mammalogist Nina M. Young of the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington, D.C.
The study was mandated by Congress as part of the reauthorization of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and sponsored by the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The study’s goal was to find “dolphin-safe” fishing techniques.
“When this project was cast by Congress,” recalled Traci Romine, tuna-dolphin coordinator for the environmental group Greenpeace, “ . . . it was as a result of concern by environmentalists that there was a need to put real time into looking for new technologies that fishermen could implement to get them out of the practice of setting on dolphins. This money should have been spent in the ocean, finding new ways to fish.”
The report’s recommendations stress international cooperation on all dolphin protection efforts. They include:
--Holding an international meeting of all nations fishing in the eastern tropical Pacific to set up certified training for boat captains, because fewer dolphins die when nets are set correctly and retrieved quickly and when crew members know how to help dolphins escape from the nets.
--Development of incentives for captains to protect dolphins during fishing. The report describes these efforts to improve captains’ performance as the “single most important step” in the protection of dolphins.
--Changing the underlying U.S. goal from the elimination of dolphin deaths to reducing the number of deaths, which is the aim of many foreign nations.
--An increase in research into possible improvements in net design and fishing techniques.
--New research on why tuna and dolphins mingle in that part of the ocean in the first place. At present, no one knows why they swim together.
Environmentalists are skeptical about the report’s emphasis on the role of ship captains, noting that the training mentioned in the study has existed for several years. The nets--not the skippers--are the problem, they say.
“It’s surprising how much attention was given to attempting to perfect an inherently flawed fishing method that continues to trap dolphins,” said Christopher Croft, president of Environmental Solutions International and a longtime dolphin activist.
Indeed, most environmentalists believe that events have overtaken many of the study’ recommendations.
In 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act ordered the U.S. tuna industry to lower the dolphin death rate for its fleet to 20,500 dolphins a year. In 1988, that requirement was extended by banning tuna imports into the United States from foreign fleets that killed more dolphins than their U.S. counterparts.
Under the law, neutral observers were placed on U.S. tuna boats to monitor dolphin deaths. A voluntary monitoring and training program has been run by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission.
In 1990, the three major U.S. tuna canners announced that they would no longer buy tuna caught by purse-seining in the eastern tropical Pacific.
The same year, the U.S. Commerce Department banned tuna imports from five countries--Mexico being the most prominent--that use purse-seine nets in that region of the Pacific. Mexico complained to the world’s trade referee--GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade--which last fall ruled that the United States has no authority to impose its environmental laws on other nations.
