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For Immediate Release
Administration Overturns Environmental Keystone "Dolphin Safe" Tuna Standard to Fall
WASHINGTON – An eleventh-hour announcement today by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Department of Commerce will mean that tuna fish caught by chasing and encircling schools of dolphins that swim with them in the eastern Pacific – a technique that has killed more than seven million dolphins – can still be labeled "Dolphin Safe" in U.S. grocery stores.
"This administration has it down by rote – when they want to put special interests ahead of science-based environmental protections for the American people, they try to sneak it out when no one's looking. This is going to make for a really lousy New Year for dolphins," said William Snape, Vice President for Law and Litigation at Defenders of Wildlife. "We have great confidence that the courts will strike down this blatantly illegal decision."
Today's announcement contradicts findings in September 2002 by the agency's own fisheries scientists that dolphin populations remain depleted as a result of tuna fishing, that dolphin deaths continue unobserved in the ETP tuna fishery, and that even dolphins released alive may die later from stress or separation of mothers and calves.
Tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) associate with schools of dolphins. Fishermen there have learned to set nets on dolphins in order to catch the accompanying large schools of tuna fish. This fishing practice, which involves chasing, harassing and netting of both the dolphins and the tuna in mile-long purse seine nets, has led to the deaths of more than seven million dolphins in the last four decades.
The agency's own announcement today acknowledged at least 2,000 observed dolphin deaths a year in this fishery. Significantly, the September report also noted that unobserved deaths dramatically exceed observed dolphin deaths.
"The whole point of the ‘Dolphin Safe' label is to give consumers a choice of tuna that wasn't caught by netting dolphins. Presented with a clear chance to do the right thing for American consumers, the environment, and even U.S. tuna companies, the Bush Administration couldn't help but run the other way," said Snape.
Congress responded to the public outcry over this slaughter by amending theM MPA several times in the 1990s to minimize dolphin deaths by tuna nets. These amendments to the MMPA led to the institution of a trade embargo of tuna from Mexico and other countries that failed to take adequate dolphin protection measures.
Mexican tuna was banned from entering the United States from 1990 until 2000, when the Clinton Administration lifted the ban, allowing Mexican dolphin-netted tuna into the country for the first time in a decade, and weakened the requirements for use of the words "Dolphin Safe" on tuna in the U.S. In response to a lawsuit by Defenders of Wildlife and the Dolphin Safe Fair Trade Coalition, the earlier label revision was found to ignore the government's own scientists and to be arbitrary and capricious. Mexico has threatened to take the United States to the World Trade Organization on this issue.
The three largest tuna sellers in the United States, StarKist, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee Tuna, have committed to selling tuna caught only without netting dolphins despite changes to the "Dolphin Safe" standard.
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