We Need a Sustainable Solution
by Campaign for Eco-Safe Tuna
March 12, 2014
We need a better system for rewarding sustainable and eco-safe fishing operations. We need a sustainable solution. The "regulations" and efforts to protect oceans and marine life are inadequate and inexcusable.
A study by the Environmental Defense Fund, "Sustaining America's Fisheries and Fishing Communities," found that the poorly managed and outsourced policies of the United States are hurting not just our oceans. These non-regulations are hurting fishing industries and the communities that depend on them. As this study explains:
It is commonly agreed that, to be well-managed, a fishery needs:
- A catch limit - a scientifically-determined, fully enforced limit on the total number of fish caught and landed
- Controls on bycatch - the unintentional killing of fish and other ocean life
- Conservation of important marine habitat
Yet the conventional fishery management system has proven unreliable in protecting fish or fishermen in the United States, even when these three components are present.
The evidence is in and the information is out there; we know how to sustainably manage fishery operations. We know how to make this work. And while they may have instituted a new regulations recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) still has work to do. NOAA's regulations acquiesce too much to self-interested bullies like the Earth Island Institute.
Compounding the problem is Earth Island's labeling scheme, which has substituted for real, transparent and honest regulations and appear on just about all cans of tuna sold in the United States. Earth Island's "dolphin-safe" label does not protect dolphins. In fact, the label covers up tens of thousands of dolphin mortalities each year in the capture of tuna that bears the label and is a virtual mandate to use fish aggregating devices (FADs) to catch tuna. As a result of FAD fishing, tuna populations are collapsing and bycatch rates are out of control. While Earth Island rakes it in from their "dolphin-safe" label, the agency responsible for regulating fishing, NOAA, sits idly by pretending to protect marine life.
This practice of outsourcing labeling to irresponsible and deceptive third parties needs to stop. Instituting "regulations" that only pay lip service to marine conservation and sustainable fishing needs to end. It's a system that rewards industry bullies and penalizes responsible fishing operations. Congress is starting to listen. It's time NOAA did too.
