Pact May Stop Dolphin Deaths in Tuna Fishing

An unlikely alliance--including the Bush Administration, Congress, environmentalists and the governments of Mexico and Venezuela--has forged a tentative agreement to stop the killing of thousands of dolphins caught annually in tuna-fishing nets.

The pact, the result of months of negotiations, is included in legislation to be introduced in Congress today. The bill has bipartisan congressional support, and Mexico and Venezuela have already agreed to abide by such a pact.

Most of the world’s tuna is caught with highly efficient purse-seine nets, which hang in the water like giant inverted umbrellas. The agreement would place a five-year moratorium on purse-seine tuna fishing in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, a stretch of ocean where dolphins and tuna mysteriously mingle. As a result, dolphins are often killed or maimed in the nets and fishing machinery.

Experts say the five-year ban would in effect end purse-seine fishing in that controversial region.

The agreement comes at an opportune time for President Bush, who drew sharp criticism from many quarters for his environmental policies at the recent Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The pact not only would end a longstanding dispute with U.S. environmentalists, but also would resolve a nagging international trade dispute.

The agreement would lift a much-contested U.S. ban on canned tuna imports from more than a dozen nations. The ban has been condemned by those nations as well as the Secretariat of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. The ban has also been an obstacle in talks between the United States and Mexico about a free-trade agreement. Environmentalists say Mexican tuna fishermen are the biggest offenders.

The Bush Administration has sought a way to end trade frictions resulting from the embargoes, which are required under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. In March, the Administration announced a plan, negotiated among other tuna-fishing nations, to solve the dispute.

When that plan failed to attract broad support, Rep. Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) began negotiations between the Administration and environmental groups. The environmentalists, though wary, are optimistic so far about the new plan.

“We’ll be popping champagne if we see the agreements signed and the bill becomes law,” said Nina M. Young, marine mammalogist with the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington, which has lobbied for years to end the fishing practice.

For reasons that scientists do not understand, dolphins swim above schools of yellowfin tuna in the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to Peru. In this prime fishing ground, when tuna boats pull their nets up, air-breathing dolphins often drown or are otherwise injured or killed.

In recent years, under provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, U.S. and foreign tuna fishermen have been increasingly restricted in the number of dolphins they can kill if they want to sell their tuna in the United States.

In 1990, H. J. Heinz Co., which makes the Star-Kist brand, agreed to environmentalists’ arguments and announced that it would no longer sell tuna caught in ways that endangered dolphins. The companies that make Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee brands quickly announced similar policies, essentially closing the U.S. market, the world’s largest.

In the same year, the Commerce Department banned tuna imports from five countries--including Mexico--whose fishermen used purse-seine nets in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

Only these “incredible constraints on the market” have brought Mexico and Venezuela, the last countries with big fishing fleets in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, to the bargaining table, said David Phillips, executive director of Earth Island Institute in San Francisco.

“The market for dolphin-unsafe tuna is collapsing,” Phillips says. “They can’t find places to sell the tuna . . . the U.S. won’t buy it; England, France and Germany won’t buy it; Thailand won’t process it, and now very recently some of their last remaining markets in Italy and Spain have begun to collapse.”

The Studds bill will set a five-year moratorium on purse-seine fishing in the Eastern Tropical Pacific beginning in 1994. It would also mandate an international research effort to find new methods of fishing for large yellowfin tuna so they could be caught without harming dolphins.

U.S. and foreign tuna boat owners say the ban on purse-seine net fishing in the Eastern Tropical Pacific would cripple their livelihood.

“Our vessels and, I believe, the international fleet would not be able to fish” in the Eastern Tropical Pacific without purse seine nets, Richard Atchison, executive director of the San Diego-based American Tunaboat Assn., said Tuesday. “It’s not technically feasible or economically feasible,” he said, echoing the conclusions of a study recently completed by the National Research Council.

Pact proponents expect little or no impact on consumer prices.