Key Senate Vote Nears Over Tuna Dispute

With the emotion evoked by Flipper the friendly dolphin, a complicated dispute over just when a can of tuna can be deemed “dolphin safe” has riven the environmental community and now has landed in the Senate.

The controversy stretches from Capitol Hill to the depths of the eastern tropical Pacific and the rough-and-tumble world of deep-sea fishing. And as tuna nets snare the dolphins that swim with them, the debate is snagging broader issues of trade rights and the ability of Mexican fishermen to sell their catches to the U.S. market.

The House passed a bill in May that relaxes rules regulating tuna fishing; the Senate is lurching toward a crucial vote as early as today.

Concerned that if the bill does not pass soon, Mexico and 10 other nations that fish the Pacific will abandon a 1995 agreement designed to minimize harm to dolphins, the Clinton administration is lobbying hard for the legislation.

It would lift a seven-year embargo on imported tuna caught in huge nets that also ensnare dolphins, which is the preferred method aboard boats operated by Mexico and other foreign fleets. But in a departure from years past, when this method caused thousands of dolphin deaths a year, the measure requires that an observer on board a helicopter or the fishing boat certify that the tuna were caught without harming dolphins.

Since the ban went into effect--forcing fleets that sell tuna in the United States to adopt more difficult and less productive fishing methods that do not harm dolphins--dolphin mortality has dropped from more than 100,000 in 1986 to an estimated 2,700 last year.

Proponents of the legislation argue that the ban runs counter to a 1991 international trade ruling that blocks such environmental restrictions on trade. Mexico argues that the ban represented an unfair U.S. trade restriction because it told foreign fishing crews how to operate their boats.

At issue now is this question: Can any method of catching tuna be considered worthy of the U.S. government-certified “dolphin-safe” label if at least some dolphins are killed or even put under stress as they seek to escape the mile-long, 50-yard-deep nets deployed around schools of tuna?

There is little dispute about the basic facts.

For years, tuna were caught in large nets that were deployed around schools of dolphins exhausted from being chased by high-speed fishing craft and helicopters. For reasons that have baffled scientists, yellow-fin tuna in the eastern Pacific travel with dolphins, just below the surface. Snaring the dolphins was a sure-fire way to get tuna.

But the nets could not be cast, or set, until the dolphins could be captured. As the tuna-laden nets were hauled in, they would entangle dolphins, leaving the air-breathing creatures to drown before the nets reached the surface.

As consumers grew concerned, an alternative method for catching tuna came into practice, leading to the ban that has kept from U.S. grocery shelves any tuna captured along with dolphin.

Tuna now sold in the United States are still caught in nets set on schools of free-swimming tuna that do not travel with dolphins, or around tuna that congregate in the shade of logs and other objects floating on the ocean’s surface.

But Greenpeace and other proponents of the Senate bill, which has bipartisan support, argue that this method captures sea turtles, marlin and sailfish, and tends to capture younger tuna that have not learned to swim with dolphins.

Critics--including the environmental groups Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth--challenge this, arguing that the turtles emerge from the nets alive and are either sold or killed by fishermen, and that other fish caught with tuna are from healthy and growing populations, so their deaths do not threaten the species.

Besides, they say, monitoring the vast reaches of ocean to certify that dolphin-safe practices have been followed is impossible.

“An observer cannot possibly see what is going on under the water over the many square miles the dolphins are being chased,” said Christopher Croft, a marine biologist who formerly worked as a National Marine Fisheries Service observer. “It’s like finding a cherry on a football field. You couldn’t possibly have confidence in that kind of coverage.”