For many years I have been arguing that if you eat tuna, most likely you are contributing to the death and decline of dolphin populations. Regardless of whether the fishing is "dolphin safe", the fishing pratice is based upon deliberately targeting dolphins, setting nets on them (and the tuna they are following) and then 'hopefully' releasing them 'safely' but traumatized. I am now encouraged to see a reputable study demonstrating that accepted 'dolphin safe' tuna fishing practices are in fact not at all dolphin safe.
We are in a time that we must now face the fact that we have been recklessly exploiting the diminishing resources in our oceans. Millions of dollars are spent to convince consumers that the fisheries are "sustainable". When you take and don't give back, when you remove faster than a species can reproduce, when you destroy habitat and when you fish down the food chain, in the end it is hard to claim any fishery today is in fact sustainable.
Read more below and decide:
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SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA -- Despite broad “dolphin safe” practices, fishing activities have continued to restrict the growth of at least one Pacific Ocean dolphin population, a new report led by a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has concluded.
Populations of dolphins in the Eastern Pacific were expected to increase in abundance after successful regulations and agreements were enacted to reduce dolphin deaths as a result of fishing “bycatch,” cases in which animals are caught unintentionally along with intended targets.
But the new study, published in the October issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series, reveals that negative impacts from fishing activities remain. Instead of reducing numbers through direct mortalities, the study by Katie Cramer of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Wayne Perryman and Tim Gerrodette of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Southwest Fisheries Science Center shows that fishing activities have disrupted the reproductive output of the northeastern pantropical spotted dolphin. The researchers note that reproductive output of the eastern spinner dolphin also declined, but a direct link to fishing effort was inconclusive.
Source: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/
