Tuna-Dolphin Update

By Kate O'Connell, CSI Board

The tuna dolphin issue continues to be one of the most contentious subjects facing the environmental community. At the end of 2001, the Court of International Trade ruled in favor of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) by dismissing a lawsuit brought by several environmental and animal protection organizations over implementation of the dolphin conservation program in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean tuna fishery. NMFS based their support of the Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program (AIDCP) on the fact that the international agreement had been successful in lowering dolphin mortality in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean since 1986 from 133,000 dolphins per year to less than 2,000 per year. NMFS also stated that the AIDCP as well has created an international control mechanism for setting and controlling dolphin mortality limits and establishing monitoring, control and surveillance of the tuna purse seine fleet operating in the EPO.

Judge Judith M. Barzilay agreed with NMFS that the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act (IDCPA) and its attendant international treaty, the AIDCP, was achieving the goal of conserving dolphin populations affected by the tuna purse seine fishery, and opened the way for Mexico to export yellowfin tuna to the United States. However, while EPO tuna can be exported to the US, it cannot be allowed a dolphin safe label under current US law, as long as dolphins were encircled.

The Mexican government contends that this fact is a trade barrier, and has issued an ultimatum to the US, saying that if the dolphin safe labeling restrictions are not removed by September, it will have no recourse but to approach the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Mexican Fisheries Commission (CONAPESCA) issued the challenge to the US in mid-March. The Mexican government will wait until September to request that the World Trade Organization force the US to open its doors to Mexican tuna. Although the US Government officially revoked the tuna embargo, effectively, entrance to the US market remains blocked to all tuna caught on dolphins.

Environmental opponents of the Barzilay ruling plan to appeal the decision by the Court of International Trade in late April, and also vow to continue their fight to maintain the current definition of the dolphin safe tuna label such that encirclement of dolphins is expressly prohibited. NMFS has been engaged in a series of Congressionally mandated studies designed to ascertain whether the yellowfin purse seine fleet in the EPO is keeping dolphin stocks from recuperating, due to stress impacts (see Whales Alive!, last volume, and also the NMFS web site at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/PR2/Tuna_Dolphin/tunadolphin.html).

The next annual meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC, the regional fisheries commission charged with implementing the AIDCP dolphin agreement) will take place in June, in Mexico.

The following news item appeared just as the April 2002 Whales Alive! was published.

Mexico Will Take Steps Next Week If USA Won't Comply

Mexico, April 11, 2002

The Mexican government announced Thursday (April 11, 2002) that it will seek an outside resolution if the United States doesn't act by next week to help Mexico obtain 'dolphin safe' tuna labels promised under an international accord. Mexico's Economy Department said in a press statement that the U.S. government had promised to appeal the court ruling barring dolphin-safe status for Mexican tuna, making it almost impossible for Mexico's tuna to enter U.S. markets. However, the U.S. Commerce Department denied ever having promised any appeal, and said that barring any new information, it would accept the court's ruling as final.

Mexican authorities said that if the United States doesn't act by next Wednesday, it would file an appeal under the International Accord for Dolphin Conservation, which committed both countries to taking steps to modify labeling standards aimed at achieving dolphin-safe status for Mexican tuna. If that fails, Mexico will bring its appeal to the World Trade Organization, the Economy Department said.

The economy secretary issued the release on the same day that Mexico's National Fishing Industry Chamber ran a full-page newspaper ad that said if a solution isn't found by next Friday, fishermen will stop adhering to the dolphin accord by banning observers from their fishing boats. "We will continue to protect the dolphins, but we're not going to let the observers on board the boats," industry president Carlos Hussong told The Associated Press.

The Mexican fleets use large nets that sometimes catch dolphins as well as tuna. But the administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton had argued that the tuna should be labeled dolphin-safe because U.S. government studies found that the dolphins were released unharmed. Hussong has argued there are problems with the long-line fishing of the kind used in the United States because it catches every species, adult and non-adult, that bites one of the miles of hooks strung behind boats, while the net casting used in Mexico focuses on an identifiable school of fish.

A nine-year U.S. embargo on Mexican tuna was lifted in 2000 but that has done little to boost tunas imports because much of the catch cannot be labeled dolphin-safe.