The WTO rules against “dolphin-safe” labels on tuna

There seems to be some misunderstanding on why dolphin-safe came into existence. From the wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_safe_label:

"Dolphins are a common by-catch in tuna fisheries, especially in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean, as they commonly swim with schools of yellowfin tuna. The dolphins, who swim closer to the surface than tuna, may be used as an indicator of tuna presence. Labeling was originally intended to discourage fishing boats from netting dolphins with tuna.

The tuna fishery in the Eastern Tropical Pacific is the only fishery that deliberately targets, chases, and nets dolphins, resulting in estimates of 6-7million dolphins dying in tuna nets since the practice was introduced in the late 1950s, the largest directed kill of dolphins on Earth.[9] With the onset of the Dolphin Safe label program, started in the US in 1990 but soon spreading to foreign tuna operations, the deaths of dolphins has decreased considerably, with official counts, based on observer coverage, of around 1,000 dolphins per year.[9] However, research by the US National Marine Fisheries Service has shown that chasing the dolphins causes baby dolphins to fall behind the pod, resulting in a large "cryptic" kill, likely damaging populations of dolphins, as the young starve or are eaten by sharks while the main pod is held by the nets.[10][11] Thus, claims that tuna fishing can continue to chase and net dolphins and not cause harm are not backed by scientific research."

This is not a problem with random by-catch. The issue was the systematic netting of dolphin pods due to their close association with tuna.

From my reading, the WTO ruled correctly is this case. In 1990, the US passed a dolphin-protection law that added strict requirements to fish caught in US waters. The “dolphin-safe” certificate was designed with this in mind. Depending on where the fish is caught (in the "Eastern Tropical Pacific Zone" (ETP) or "Other fisheries"), there are more stringent or lax requirements. For the ETP zone, an example requirement is that a captain must receive training/certification on dolphin safe practices and also verify the entire haul of fish was caught using dolphin-safe practices. Fish caught in the "Other fisheries" are subject to less stringent requirements. Since much of Mexico’s tuna are caught in the ETP zone, they argue that they are unfairly being held up to US standards. Other countries, in “Other fisheries” zones, are held to a lower requirement. If Mexican tuna are sold to other countries, then they fulfill multiple unnecessary requirements and are at a disadvantage to other countries. Futhermore, it would segment their fishing industry into "US approved" and "Non-US approved" because certification must be applied to the entire haul of fish, not a portion of a haul. There's a lot of text after this but the court determined this certification is unfair and is considered "less favorable treatment".

Here is a pdf of the case: https://docs.wto.org/dol2fe/Pages/FE_Search/DDFDocuments/225...

While this is disappointing outcome, I hope more HN readers will take up the "save the dolphins, stop TPP" rally. For all of the tech community's outcry against the TPP's pro-DRM, pro-copyright provisions and blatant disregard for users' rights, nothing is going to help sway public opinion like a "save the <cute animal>" appeal.

WTO and TPP globalization's aim is to rollback consumer and environmental protections to the least-common denominator, making it cheaper and easier for businesses to thumb their noses at safety, antropogenic climate change and species extinction. WTO could have set the bar to a sensible, consistent level, but instead decided that sensible and responsible measures which stopped dolphin deaths were unimportant.

I am not sure I understand the TPP connection here.. The ruling wasn't made under TPP as that's not even in force. So I fail to understand the anti-TPP propaganda here.. This dolphin ruling would have happened with or without TPP.

I am not defending TPP at all, but this ruling has nothing to do with it. It seems like a bit of a propaganda ploy to connect the two. Will saying no to TPP undo this ruling? Nope.

The fishing of Tuna itself is morally questionable. We are busy wiping out the oceans of life. Tuna fish are at the top of the food chain, fishing Tuna has been likened to hunting tigers.

I wasn't expecting to see so much approval of dolphin-safe fishing from the Sierra Club...

Compare http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=6539 (a marine biology blog), which I'll quote from at length:

> It can be difficult for people who have never seen it in action to appreciate the scale of modern commercial fisheries. Commercial fishermen aren’t out on the high seas with handheld rods and reels catching one fish at a time. The nets that tuna fishermen use, which are called purse seines, are miles long. With a net that size, it’s pretty much impossible to catch only tuna. Those nets also catch anything that happens to be swimming near the tuna. These unfortunate animals, killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are called bycatch.

> There are three ways that tuna schools can be located. The first is to search for them directly using surface ships and small aircraft, which is inefficient, time-consuming, and not always effective (you can’t see tuna from the surface if they’re deep enough or if weather conditions aren’t ideal). The second is to attract tuna using floating objects, which we’ll discuss in more detail shortly. The third is to follow dolphins- for unknown reasons, dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific are often found associated with schools of large tuna.

> Because finding dolphin-associated schools of tuna was extremely easy (unlike tuna, dolphins have to return to the surface where they are easy to spot), it was the preferred method for decades. The Eastern Tropical Pacific Tuna Fishery had a high rate of dolphin bycatch. According to NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Service Center, an estimated six million dolphins were killed during the forty or so years that purse seining around dolphin-associated tuna schools took place. That’s approximately 150,000 dolphins per year, which is by far the largest cetacean bycatch of any fishery in history. However, it is important to note that mortality from being tuna bycatch did not mean that dolphins were endangered. The two primary species involved are spinner dolphins (data deficient) and spotted dolphins (least concern).

> A massive PR campaign led by the Earth Island Institute resulted in making it illegal to sell tuna caught from dolphin-associated schools in the United States. Dolphin-safe tuna was born.

> Now that fishermen could no longer use what was previously the most common method for catching tuna, they needed to change strategies. They turned to using floating objects (sometimes called FAD’s or fish aggregating devices) to attract tuna to a known location. One of the strangest known behaviors exhibited by open-ocean animals is their tendency to aggregate around any solid object that floats. This might have something to do with the fact that many open-ocean animals go their entire lives without seeing any sort of hard surface. This method is extremely effective for aggregating tuna, but it also aggregates many other species. Setting a purse seine around a dolphin-associated tuna school results in catching primarily large adult tuna (the target size because they have more meat per unit effort and because they have reproduced already) and dolphins (which are not endangered) . Setting a purse seine around a floating object results in all sorts of bycatch, including endangered sea turtles, open ocean shark species which are already in serious trouble, and high numbers of small tuna (which have not yet reproduced).

> A simple glance at the table above shows that while dolphins bycatch goes down, every other studied species (except “unidentified bony fishes”, “other sailfishes”, and marlins) has much higher bycatch rates in “floating object” tuna fishing than in “dolphin associated” tuna fishing. In other words, while better for dolphins, “dolphin-safe” tuna is disastrous for almost everything else.

> If you do the math on this (and you don’t have to because the Environmental Justice Foundation already did), you find that one saved dolphin costs 25,824 small tuna, 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks and rays, 1 billfish, 1,193 triggerfish and other small fish, and 0.06 sea turtles.

> Last summer, I went on NPR’s “The Pat Morrison Show” to discuss this issue with a representative from the Earth Island Institute, the organization most responsible for dolphin-safe tuna policies. I had expected him to acknowledge that the bycatch was a problem, but that it was still important to protect dolphins because they’re intelligent mammals (or something like that). Instead, he argued that there was no bycatch of endangered species taking place under dolphin safe tuna policies, and he accused me of perpetuating the propaganda of evil fishermen who “just want to kill dolphins”. Yikes.

> A conscious choice to go back to a previously-banned fishing method that kills large numbers of charismatic animals puts a bad taste in my mouth, but the fact is that fishing for dolphin-associated schools of tuna catches primarily non-endangered dolphins and adult tuna. Dolphin-safe tuna fishing is killing dozens of species, many of whom are endangered, and threatening the integrity of entire ecosystems.

Dolphin-safe tuna might be the most straightforward example in the world of political posturing for its own sake, in direct opposition to the avowed goals of the organizations that support it. And here's the Sierra Club decrying a step towards clawing it back.

> Most of us want to know that the food we purchase and serve to our families does not come at the expense of wildlife.

I suspect this is correct but I do not share this sentiment, and in fact, I find it absurd. Most people only want to harm specifically raised and genetically modify living things for their entire miserable lives in captivity OR make sure that only a very select group of free living things is killed due to a narrow sense of cultural aesthetics.

I don't think we should rush out and needlessly murder dolphins, but the average person may notice that label, but removing it would likely have little to no bearing on consumer selection which is driven primarily by advertising.

At first I thought they would call it a misguiding label. Because for real protection of sea life best is to stop buying sea fish.

>But today, for the fourth time in four years, ...

In these trade agreements, some countries are more equal than others. The US probably has the trade power to continue to ignore the WTO ruling. The US has done so repeatedly in the past with other issues.

I wonder how the tuna feel about this decision.

How narcissistic! Trade politics block the fishermen from making use of the occasional dolphin that gets caught in the net. Why toss the meat when it could be used to feed starving people? It's this kind of moralism that keeps everyone down.