MARTIN SLOANE | Supermarket Shopper Regulations protecting dolphins still in effect

Since 1990, the Dolphin Safe label on cans and pouches of tuna has guaranteed U.S. consumers that the tuna they are buying was caught by nets that did not trap dolphins.
Before Congress adopted regulations to protect dolphins, the crews of fishing vessels chased the dolphins, sometimes for hours because schools of tuna are attracted to groups of dolphins. The fishermen then dropped their nets surrounding the exhausted dolphins and the tuna beneath them. The dolphins were hauled aboard and then discarded back into the water, dead or dying. Hundreds of thousands of dolphins were killed each year before conservationists prevailed on Congress to intervene.
Action taken
In 1972, Congress adopted the Marine Mammal Protection Act, (MMPA) prohibiting U.S. fishing boats from dropping nets on dolphins to catch tuna. It imposed the same standard on foreign tuna imports in the 1980s. And finally, Congress adopted regulations providing for the Dolphin Safe label in 1990. By 1994, the entire U.S. fishing fleet was dolphin safe. The end of the dolphin slaughter was an important accomplishment for conservation groups.
Foreign fishing fleets, especially those in Latin America, have always been unhappy with the Dolphin Safe regulations. Mexico claims dolphin safe regulations violate free trade agreements and has threatened to sue the United States in the World Trade Organization if the regulations are not relaxed. To appease Mexico, and with the support of the Secretary of Commerce, the United States passed the misleadingly named International Dolphin Conservation Act in 1997. This law allows the secretary to redefine the MMPA and dolphin safe fishing practices. William Daley, who was then the secretary, attempted to do just that.
Refusal
In April of 2000, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson ruled in favor of the United States Humane Society and other conservationist groups and refused to allow the government to weaken the regulations. Several months later, the government challenged that ruling in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In July 2001, in a unanimous decision the three-judge panel ruled in favor of the conservationists. The court stated, the secretary's move to weaken Dolphin Safe standards was "contrary to law and an abuse of his discretion."
On Dec. 31, 2002, the present Secretary of Commerce, Donald Evans, went back on the offensive to weaken the regulations. Evans ruled that the dolphin-safe label could apply to tuna caught with dolphin-encircling nets, as long as shipboard observers certified that no dolphins were killed or harmed. Conservationist groups went back to court to block the action. On April 11, 2003, the same Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction blocking the commerce secretary's action. For the time being, the Dolphin Safe protections remain in effect.
My most recent memory of Dolphins was watching them on CNN as they arrived at a harbor in Iraq to search for mines. It is nothing short of criminal to allow the slaughter of dolphins to begin again. To learn more about this, search for "Dolphin Safe Label" on the Internet.
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United Feature Syndicate