Ethical Debate: Dolphin Safe Tuna

[Erik von Nein]

This started as a post made by a blogger, WhySharksMatter, over at Southern Fried Scientist (links to his debate, one should read before continuing). His set up? Dolphin safe tuna is really only safe for dolphins. While still catching hundreds of dolphins per year, the method (using floating logs with shiny attractions and purse seine nets) devastates other species, including small tunas (non-economical catches), sharks, sea turtles and many others.

The debate, then, is do we allow the old tuna fishing method (following dolphin pods to find tuna schools and using purse seines) which, while killing over 4,000 dolphins a year, doesn't as heavily impact other species, or do we continue using dolphin safe methods that won't result int he deaths of as many dolphins but does heavily impact other species? Keep in mind these dolphins are not endangered species and most likely could absorb the loses. They have before.

I support WhySharksMatter's argument that dolphin safe tuna is a disaster and that older methods are more environmentally sound (allowing, of course, that other methods are currently unavailable).

[Thanas]

To be honest, I wish people would stop eating tuna and a lot of other fish as well. Perfect solution right there.

There are a lot of fishs out there that can be eaten without impacting on the environment that heavily, but because everybody has to eat tuna...

[Erik von Nein]

Of course, which is partly why WhySharksMattered tossed out the idea of "just stop doing it" as a solution. It's not going to happen without some massive changes in the way people conduct their lives. Overfishing itself is a completely different matter than what's being proposed here.

[Thanas]

Actually, many tuna species are quite overfished, so yes, it is an issue here.

[Erik von Nein]

*Sigh* I know that. And the populations he's talking about are heavily overfished. That's not the point of this ethical debate, though.

[Mr Flibble]

The solution could actually be even easier than "just stop eating tuna". We could just stop catching tuna. Australia has been farming tuna for several years now, until recently a major drawback of that was that you still needed to catch tuna in the first place (there are other drawbacks, such as local water quality and attracting sharks to the area, but there are ways around this). However recently they have successfully managed to breed tuna in captivity. It is only a matter of time until tuna will be farmed here from egg to sale. This will severely reduce the impact of tuna fishing on other ocean creatures.

[Mayabird]

Not necessarily. Tuna are carnivores and so they'll need to eat meat to survive and grow. The feed fish have to come from somewhere, and that itself is usually intensive fishing.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

*Sigh* I know that. And the populations he's talking about are heavily overfished. That's not the point of this ethical debate, though.

It is, however, relevant. Hauling up huge numbers of large oceanic fish via purse seine nets isn't sustainable in the long run. The smart thing to do would be to simply stop the practice of large-scale commercial tuna fishing altogether. The even smarter thing to do would be to put an end to most large-scale commercial fishing, period, since crashing global fish populations are creating ecological niches which will likely be filled by jellyfish. Not quite a dolphin-friendly outcome as most dolphins don't find them very palatable.

But, taking the "stop commercial fishing" option off the table, and bearing in mind the enormous harm commercial fishing already does, the ethical thing to do would be to try to minimize the damage done to the rest of the ecosystem. Which pretty much means Flipper becomes part of your next tuna salad sandwich.

[Pick]

If stopping altogether won't happen, then I think going back to the older methods is fair. Sea turtles and sharks are awesome, too.

[Mr Flibble]

Not necessarily. Tuna are carnivores and so they'll need to eat meat to survive and grow. The feed fish have to come from somewhere, and that itself is usually intensive fishing.

You can easily feed tuna smaller farmed fish which are easier to farm. There will be a problem with scale, but at least some tuna will be available for food, and we can stop the ocean fishing and let their stocks recover. It is not like Australia has a shortage of salt water. Considerable research is going into the Aquaculture industry in my state, as it is a valuable source of income.

[Erik von Nein]

Well, the dolphins tend to get thrown back into the water, so they won't really get processed, just like the "small tuna" category of bycatch in WhySharksMatter's post. However, yes, at the moment commercial fishing of tuna isn't going to cease, and it doesn't affect the broader ethical implications: do we allow a particular fishing/hunting/whatever practice to continue if it harms multiple species, or go choose a different practice that has larger impacts on a single species?

As far as tuna fishing goes; that's impracticable, for the reason Mayabird already gave, as well as the fact that they're a pretty wide-ranging species, thus requiring fairly open areas, as well, when fish are farmed disease instances and pollution tend to rise dramatically in the area where they're being farmed, to say nothing of the drugs and other chemicals used to fight off diseases and parasites. Farming is a better solution to herbivore species than carnivorous.

But, yes, reducing the pressures on tuna fisheries is a necessity. However, that's a much more fair-reaching solution than the one proposed in the ethical debate. This would help take pressures off the bycatch species in the immediate.

[Mr Flibble]

As far as tuna fishing goes; that's impracticable, for the reason Mayabird already gave, as well as the fact that they're a pretty wide-ranging species, thus requiring fairly open areas, as well, when fish are farmed disease instances and pollution tend to rise dramatically in the area where they're being farmed, to say nothing of the drugs and other chemicals used to fight off diseases and parasites. Farming is a better solution to herbivore species than carnivorous.

We already farm tuna, and already have bred them in captivity, so range is not really an issue. Pollution is, but there are ways around that. As I said Australia is putting heavy research into the farming of tuna. It is also pretty easy to farm their feedstock fish as they are smaller, and we don't need them alive as long if they are to be feed stock.

Do I think it will be enough to replace all the tuna caught from open seas fishing, of course not. But we can still eat some tuna, and stop mass harvesting it from the ocean.


As to the ethical debate, assuming that tuna fishing will continue, the ethical solution is to choose the option which does the least harm to the oceanic ecosystem, which from your description would appear to be the dolphin unfriendly version.

[Simon_Jester]

*Sigh* I know that. And the populations he's talking about are heavily overfished. That's not the point of this ethical debate, though.

It is, however, relevant. Hauling up huge numbers of large oceanic fish via purse seine nets isn't sustainable in the long run. The smart thing to do would be to simply stop the practice of large-scale commercial tuna fishing altogether. The even smarter thing to do would be to put an end to most large-scale commercial fishing, period, since crashing global fish populations are creating ecological niches which will likely be filled by jellyfish. Not quite a dolphin-friendly outcome as most dolphins don't find them very palatable.

Out of curiosity, why jellyfish? Is it purely because they're just about the only thing in the ocean we aren't trying to catch, or is there some other reason?

[The Vortex Empire]

By lowering the populations of big fish, you leave small fish, which jellyfish eat, and you eliminate the jellyfish's main predators, allowing their population to grow rapidly. That would be my guess, anyway.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

By lowering the populations of big fish, you leave small fish, which jellyfish eat, and you eliminate the jellyfish's main predators, allowing their population to grow rapidly. That would be my guess, anyway.

This is precisely it. Jellyfish are moving into niches formerly occupied by the sorts of fish we like to eat. On top of that, they tend to do much better than fish in the sorts of oxygen-poor water that's being created by our insistence on polluting coastal waters with a lot of nutrients. And we're also helping to spread them around the world as jellyfish larvae end up hitching rides in the ballast water of ocean-going ships.

[Shroom Man 777]

Jellyfish are edible. We can always eat them.

[Molyneux]

I adore tuna. It is an integral component in my absolute favorite food. However, I am trying to stop eating it, due to the high mercury content as well as the environmental impact of consuming an overfished population.

If I can stop eating tuna, so can other people.

[His Divine Shadow]

It's too bad, it's the only fish I find palatable.

[Erik von Nein]

It's not that you can't eat ANY tuna, you just have to make sure you're eating sustainable tuna. Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Guide is a good source for such information. This link has all the alternatives to Mediterranean seine net-caught tuna.

[Junghalli]

Couldn't dolphin intelligence be a factor here too? Dolphins are probably smarter than most of the organisms that are killed by dolphin safe tuna fishing. Couldn't you make an argument that it would be ethical to prioritize the survival of smart organisms over dumb ones?

Then again, general destruction of the ecosystem is probably not going to be good for dolphins either in the long run...

[Erik von Nein]

You could prioritize intelligence, however sharks are most certainly keystone predators. Their loss would devastate the ecosystem, as would the loss of sea turtle populations (though to a lesser extent). That would, in turn, also damage dolphin populations, as well.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Couldn't dolphin intelligence be a factor here too? Dolphins are probably smarter than most of the organisms that are killed by dolphin safe tuna fishing. Couldn't you make an argument that it would be ethical to prioritize the survival of smart organisms over dumb ones?

Then again, general destruction of the ecosystem is probably not going to be good for dolphins either in the long run...

There is also the numbers argument though. There does come a point where to save an individual person, the number of lab rats sacrificed becomes wrong. The same can be said for dolphins and other species. The loss of dolphins is small compared to the potential losses just in numbers of sharks and other organisms, and that is before you take cascading ecosystem effects into account.