> 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.
These numbers aren't consistent with the table, and the link doesn't seem to have the relevant data. According to the numbers in the table, a dolphin costs 138 mahi-mahi. The other numbers become similarly smaller, when comparable.
> You and I can argue about the relative value of dolphins vs. triggerfish all day, but the important take-home message here is that we are protecting animals that are not endangered at the expense of dozens of other species
If that's the important take-home message, it sounds like the writer has already made up his mind about the relative value of dolphins to other species. And it sounds like I disagree with him. I think dolphins are more intelligent than most species, and have more moral worth, and killing hundreds or thousands of other fish to save one dolphin sounds like a potentially good trade.
The writer seems to want to frame this as charismatic versus non-charismatic, but the fact remains that I care about dolphins more than other species, and I don't care that they aren't endangered.
(I'm mostly vegetarian, but even before that, I avoided tuna because I didn't know how much to trust the dolphin-safe label.)
> and some of those other species are endangered.
Which ones, specifically? Mahi-mahi and wahoo aren't, at least. The rest of that list seem to be broad categories with no single conservation status.
Is this a case of "we're protecting a single dolphin at the expense of lots of other non-endangered fish, and also 5% of an endangered turtle"?