The Commerce Department ruled today that encircling dolphins with nets a mile wide to catch tuna does not significantly harm them, clearing the way for Mexico and other countries to market their tuna in the United States as dolphin-safe.
The decision drew an immediate protest from wildlife and environmental advocates, who said the ruling was at odds with the department's own scientific findings and appeared to be little more than a political gift to Mexico. They vowed to take the administration to court.
Tuna fishermen in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela have fought for years to put a "dolphin safe" label on their exports to the United States, even though their use of nets to encircle schools of dolphins to catch tuna, which often swim just below the dolphins, has been abandoned by American tuna producers.
American consumers are familiar with the dolphin-safe label on cans of tuna from United States companies like StarKist and Bumble Bee. Mexican and foreign exporters have been allowed to sell their tuna on American shelves but have largely stayed away, saying they need the dolphin-safe label to compete.
William T. Hogarth, the assistant administrator for fisheries of the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service, said that the number of dolphin deaths had declined drastically in recent decades and that safeguards would ensure that the dolphins are not endangered in the quest for tuna.
"You have to look at the big picture," Mr. Hogarth said in an interview. "I looked at all the scientific data. I feel very comfortable with this decision."
Mr. Hogarth estimated that about 1,600 dolphins are killed each year by tuna fishermen, down from about 350,000 two decades ago.
Dolphin and yellowfin tuna tend to run together in the eastern Pacific, with the dolphins swimming near the surface to breathe. Under the often criticized practice, fishermen in large vessels send helicopters aloft in search of dolphin schools, then deploy speedboats to encircle them and the tuna schools beneath with floating nets often more than a mile in length. While the tuna are harvested, the dolphins are supposed to escape over the floating net.
The Commerce Department's decision today said that fishermen using the practice can designate their product as dolphin-safe if no dolphins were injured or killed when the tuna were caught. Under an arrangement first reached by the Clinton administration, observers from the fishermen's countries will be posted on the vessels.
"Dolphin-safe means that dolphins can be encircled or chased, but no dolphins can be killed or seriously injured in the set in which the tuna are harvested," Mr. Hogarth said.
Wildlife advocates voiced outrage at the decision, which they said would place huge new strains on two varieties — the eastern spinner and the offshore spotted dolphin — whose numbers have declined by as much as 70 percent in recent years.
"This fishing method would allow harming and even killing thousands of dolphins each year in tuna nets," said Kitty Block, special counsel to the Humane Society of the United States. "For the first time in over a decade, dolphin-deadly tuna will be sold in the United States — and what makes this so unconscionable is that this tuna will be misleadingly labeled dolphin-safe."
The wildlife advocates said the decision was at odds with a new study by the department's own scientists. In a report that was leaked to the news media earlier this month, scientists at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., found that depleted dolphin populations were not rebounding in the Pacific waters patrolled by Mexican, Colombian and Venezuelan tuna boats, and they cited the net-fishing procedure as a cause.
"Despite considerable scientific effort by fishery scientists, there is little evidence of recovery, and concerns remain that the practice of chasing and encircling dolphins somehow is adversely affecting the ability of those depleted stocks to recover," the study said.
Asked about the study, Mr. Hogarth said it was not conclusive.
But David Phillips, director of the Earth Island Institute's International Marine Mammal Project, said the Bush administration appeared eager to placate Mexico, which has had many requests to Washington pushed aside by other matters in recent years. "The State Department is saying, `We promised the Mexicans we're letting this tuna in,' " Mr. Phillips said.
He said his group would file an injunction against the administration within days.
The group has twice prevailed in lawsuits seeking to block a redefinition of dolphin- safe.
Source: New York Times - By Christopher Marquis