New ‘Dolphin Safe’ Standard Stirs Controversy

WASHINGTON —  Federal officials said Thursday a new standard for the decade-long “dolphin safe” label on cans of tuna will help spur international efforts to protect dolphins. Critics insisted more dolphins will be killed.

The Commerce Department issued a standard Thursday that allows the use of the “dolphin safe” label on tuna caught with huge encircling nets. Historically these nets have ensnarled many dolphins.

Supporters of the change will help international efforts to protect dolphins and other marine life, but critics said the standard will lead to more dolphins being killed as they get caught in tuna nets.

The Commerce Department, however, said it found insufficient evidence that the tuna nets cause a “significant adverse impact” on dolphins that often swim with tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Fewer than 2,000 dolphins were reported killed because of tuna fishing last year, compared with 133,000 in 1986.

But environmentalists and marine biologists were divided over whether the change in the label will benefit or harm efforts to protect dolphins.

“This will cheapen the label. It will confuse consumers,” said John Fitzgerald, who as an environmental lobbyist helped write the legislation in 1990 that led to the dolphin-safe labeling.

David Phillips, director of Earth Island Institute’s marine mammal project near San Francisco, called the standard a “consumer fraud and a death warrant for thousands of dolphin.”

But such groups as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the Center for Marine Conservation and the Environmental Defense Fund argue that the exclusion from the U.S. market of tuna caught through encirclement has only hindered international efforts to safeguard dolphins.