Dolphin-friendly tuna - actually quite silly

Dolphins are lovely, everybody knows that!

And that is exactly why they recieve greater protection over many other marine species. A good example of this is dolphin-friendly tuna. Now i’m sure you are all familiar with the little labels on the side of tuna tins, letting you know that that tin of tuna is dolphin - friendly. I’d just like to highlight a few things to make you a bit more aware of exactly what happens to bring that tin into your shopping basket.

So how did dolphin-friendly tuna come about? Basically fishermen noticed that large shoals of tuna liked to swim under pods of dolphins, and realised they could make a lot of money if they looked for dolphins and then stuck a massive purse seine net in the sea to catch the tuna. Unfortunately this led to a big decline in dolphin numbers, which was followed by that old chestnut, PUBLIC OUTRAGE. So fishermen then had to find tuna at other places, such as on coral reefs etc, and not go looking for them under dolphins. They also had to improve their nets, so that dolphins (who are a little more intelligent than some sea dwellers) could escape through a specially designed system in the top of the net.

There are all sorts of problems with this.

Firstly, dolphin-friendly does not mean that no dolphins were killed during the production of that tin of tuna, but that the fleet that caught the tuna may not have specifically fished where tuna was swimming under a dolphin pod. (I say may not, because it isn’t always regulated.)

Secondly, by fishing for tuna in a much more haphazard way (at a coral reef), where the tuna are mixing with many other species, means that instead of one species being caught as by-catch (i.e dolphins under the old method), hundreds of different species can be caught. Some of these species - such as sea turtles and sharks - are listed as endangered under CITES, and have really slow reproductive rates. Therefore their population drops dramatically. Interestingly, dolphins have a proportionally high reproductive rate, and can recover from a loss in numbers much quicker.

Thirdly, (to simplify), the public love dolphins, and therefore they get a lot of research done on them. The public do not love sharks, and therefore research into the affect of dolphin-friendly tuna on some species is not being undertaken. Even species that are not cute and cuddly are absolutely vital to marine ecosystems, and as many have lower reproductive rates than dolphins, are more likely to die out as a result of dolphin-friendly tuna than the likelyhood of dolphins dying out if we return to old tuna fishing methods.

Environmental groups are at present divided on the merits of dolphin-friendly tuna, but it must be remembered that a lot of these groups supported the idea initially, and their campaigning is part of the reason why we have dolphin-friendly tuna in the first place.

I may actually write this as an article at some point, if i run out of contributors!