Groups Sue to Block Sale of Tuna Caught in Large Nets

Environmental groups sued Wednesday to block a federal decision allowing tuna to be sold as dolphin-safe even when it is caught with the huge, encircling nets once blamed for killing hundreds of thousands of dolphins.

“It’s a death warrant for dolphins,” said Sam LaBudde, a marine biologist who led the dolphin safe campaign in the 1980s after posing as a cook on a Mexican tuna boat for six months and videotaping the slaughter.

The decade-old dolphin safe standard, which bans such nets and requires observers on the tuna boats to certify that no dolphins are harmed, has dramatically decreased dolphin deaths. Fewer than 2,000 dolphins were reported killed because of tuna fishing last year, compared with 133,000 in 1986.

But the Latin American fleet has generally not complied and therefore is barred from selling its tuna in lucrative U.S. markets. Mexican officials consider it a free trade issue, complaining that the dolphin safe standard is an unfair barrier.

In response, the Clinton administration in 1997 ordered the rules changed to allow use of the purse-seine nets as long as boats carry observers who must certify that the fishermen allowed the dolphins to escape without injury.

Environmentalists got an amendment passed blocking the change unless the government could prove the nets do not harm dolphins. Despite extensive evidence to the contrary, the plaintiffs say, Commerce Secretary William Daley declared in April that researchers could not prove that depleted dolphin populations would be harmed.

That cleared the way for the proposal to go into effect in September.

Commerce officials dispute that the changed standard will kill more dolphins. Terry Garcia, assistant commerce secretary for oceans and atmosphere, said using the big nets is actually better environmentally because it will reduce the catch of other species.

Dolphins are at risk because schools of yellowfin tuna often swim below dolphin herds off the Central Pacific Coast. From the 1950s to 1980s, dolphin populations were devastated as tuna fishermen hauled in both species, keeping the tuna and sloughing off the rest.

About 95% of the world’s tuna fleet has given up fishing with purse-seine nets, but about 100 boats in Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela still fish the old way, said David Phillips, director of the Earth Island Institute, another of the plaintiffs.

Not all environmental groups back the lawsuit. Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the Center for Marine Conservation and the Environmental Defense Fund argue that as long as the Latin American fleets are treated as renegades, they will kill dolphins in higher numbers than if observers are on board the boats.

The new rules require the observers to certify that tuna caught while dolphins are injured or killed was stored and processed separately. But without the dolphin-safe label, tuna is worth roughly half as much, a loss of up to $1 million per boatload, Phillips said.

LaBudde says that places too much faith in the ability of a solitary observer to monitor boatloads of fishermen who depend on the higher profits that come with the dolphin-safe label.

“If you think a Mexican observer won’t be under pressure to fabricate that dolphins weren’t injured, you’re wrong,” he said. “The observer’s job under this proposed system would be an unbelievable nightmare.”