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... iru's that killed tens of thousands of seals in the north sea in the late 1980 's, and later caused the deaths of hundreds of stripped dolphins in the Mediterranean. They did not find any. Nor was there any suggestion that the dolphins had suffered from a parasitic disease or pollution. (Bonner 6) This is how they came to the conclusion it had to be nets because the dolphins didnt die from any disease, but had marks on them. The scientists then put two and two together and they figured out it was the nets. This also tells them that the dolphins were basically murdered by fisherman just so they could get their fish.
Thirty to thirty-eight of the dolphins examined had bad marks around the beak and flipper areas. They also had other marks that told the examiners that they were caught up in nets. A couple of dolphins had lost their flippers and other parts because the fisherman had to sever the parts to get the dolphins free from the entanglement: The dolphins died suddenly, with fish still undigested in their stomachs. The species of fish, mainly mackerel and pilchard, and the narrow mesh of the nets marks, suggest that they were caught by purse seiners or pair trawlers, large boats which ran a net between them up to a kilometre The fisherman didnt care what got caught up because they could have shortened the net and watched where they dropped, but they only cared about one thing and that was catching the fish. Dolphins killed by tuna fleets are expected to be less than five thousand in 1993. In 1992 15, 470 died in nets (Marine Conservation News 22).
This is a huge increase and no one cared; they just wanted to make money. Six years ago when a heart-breaking video of a dolphin thrashing in the net of a Panamanian tuna boat was flashed across the television screens around the world, the solution for once seemed blessedly simple: Ban the fishing gear and practices that enmesh the sleek, endearing mammals along with yellowfin tuna. Congress and the food companies reacted swiftly. With in a couple of years, the U. S. tuna market was essentially closed to all but dolphin safe fish. (Carpenter 71) This story is why tuna companies should stop fishing with nets and dragging them all over the water and maybe find a different way to catch their tuna.
Finally, the government came through, but it was still late because another dolphin had died a horrible death. Five years ago the Eastern Pacific was a killing field for dolphins. Over the past thirty-five years six million cetaceans were killed from the tuna boats nets. The dolphins were caught in the nets because tuna swim right underneath the dolphins and this is how the dolphins get captured. Tuna boat captains now have special orders and hopefully this might work: Before a net is hauled in the captain backs up the boat, allowing one end of the net to dip below the sea surface opening up a escape channel for trapped dolphins. Skippers also use a special net with a panel of fine webbing to prevent dolphins from snagging their beaks and drowning.
Moreover, each tuna boat is granted an annual dolphin kill quota. If a skipper exceeds his limit, he must stop fishing on dolphins for the year, and the excess is deducted from his allotment for the next year. (Carpenter 72) This is a good technique, but they shouldnt kill any dolphins. The new quota should read: if they kill one dolphin they will lose their boating license and be fined heavily. With the safe nets, they should have no problem keeping dolphins alive. The government should also only let a certain amount of boats to tuna hunt and they should all be professionals. That way we will have no dolphin killing.
Tuna boats have tried several methods of keeping dolphins away from nets. The first method is by bombing and the second is using fake fish. The bombing procedure works like this. First they find a school of dolphins and then a helicopter or speed boat drops a seal bomb to disorient the dolphins. This method allows the fisherman to net both dolphins and tuna and once they are caught up the fisherman drop another bomb to chase the dolphins out the other end of the net.
However, environmentalists say the dolphins get caught up in the nets still. (Anderson 19) Congress finally has done something right: In the late 1988, the U. S. Congress banned the use of explosives more powerful then seal bombs, which were exempted from the legislation pending further studies. Last November, the national fishery service concluded that no explosives should be detonated within one and a half feet The Fisheries Service stepped in and told the boats what to do because the government was too scared. The other method works like this. The plastic devices reflect the dolphins sonar signals and stop them from swimming into the nets: Dolphins and porpoises forage for food with the help of sonar.
Like bats, they send out sound waves and make sense of their environment beyond the range of their sight from the echos they receive back. Its as if the animal has a spotlight on top of its head, a bit like a miners lamp. says David Goodson. , but fishing nets are too fine to reflect the sonar. Essentially, the net is acoustically invisible to the dolphins. (Coghlan 18) If they can find a way to make the nets sonar built, then the dolphins will steer away from them and there will be no dead dolphins. The design of the experiment is a lightweight ball: The curvature of the inner surface is critical and must be exactly right to give the required reflection from any angle approached (Coghlan 18). The dolphins are supposed to swim over the nets, but instead they swam around them and then after it was clear they went back to the original course after they bombarded it with sonar.
Goodson says a much larger scale test is now required to optimize the reflection design and spacing (Coghlan 18). The only hold back for this project is the money needed for the research and without further support this idea will fail. Humans have directly caused some of the dolphins deaths too. The humans alone have done this without any weapons, chemicals or nets. According to C. A.
L. M (Department of Conservation and Land Management): Young dolphins at Monkey Mia in Western Australia are dying because their mothers have become dependent on food handed out by park rangers to entertain tourists. The Dolphins nursing from hand fed females, are malnourished and vulnerable to disease and attack by predators. (Anderson 5) The rangers are killing the dolphins and the tourists think it is fun. If the dolphins become weak then they will die from sharks and other enemies because they are so weak they can not fight back.
In 1975 tourists were feeding four female dolphins and only two of these dolphins are still alive. The females produced seventeen offspring and only five remain. The mortality rate was seventy percent since 1986 (Anderson 5) Even sometimes dolphins kill their own kind. Nineteen healthy dolphins were stranded on the beach and died because they followed their leader.
Every one of the dolphins were healthy except the male leader, the one they followed. Paul Jepsen says Sick cetaceans often beach themselves (q. Anderson 5). This is just like a cult doing what ever the leader does.
According to Jepsen: There are three theories about why groups of dolphins become stranded on beaches, he says. It may be through disease, or because they chase fish inshore or because of some sort of navigational error -- perhaps because their echo sounding systems do not spot gently shelving beaches. The autopsies showed that none of the dolphins had been eating fish immediately before they die. (q. Anderson 5) This is the fault of the dolphins, even though they are supposed to be the smartest mammal then why are they doing this to themselves. After all the killing of dolphins by tuna boats, the government has finally made some rules against these fishermen. Tuna companies have agreed that they will no longer sell tuna caught by methods harmful to dolphins (Tuna w / o Guilt 63).
The companies will put out a label on all cans that will say Dolphin Safe. According to Senator Joseph Biden: The Tuna company will put a DOLPHIN SAFE logo on its cans, and may have to charge a couple of cents more to account for higher costs, OReilly said. The dolphin-free promise was matched on the same day by the other two major canner's, Bumble Bee Seafood and Van Camp Seafood which sells Chicken of the Sea brand. Environmentalists responded with glee.
It was an incredibly responsible action. (Tuna w / o Guilt 63) The canner's have agreed as well that They will no longer accept tuna caught in the region, unless it has been harvested without saving the dolphins as well (Tuna w / o Guilt 63). When they had announced that the tuna fish would be made dolphin free, they said It symbolized the triumph of ecological values that not only can not be measured in dollars and cents, but have no obvious human benefit at all, this ones for the dolphins (Swim With the Dolphins 76). Heinz made the first move to ensure tuna fish to be dolphin safe. Following them were other companies. Heinz did this in concern for customers and in taking this step, it received post cards and letters from concerned school children.
Ted Smyth says: Hopefully in a few years the safest place for tuna will be swimming underneath a dolphins. (Swim With the Dolphins 76) If a law is passed that tuna boats can not net around dolphins then tuna will not have anything to worry about because they swim with the dolphins and no one will be able to get to them. Health experts urge Americans to live longer by eating more fish, but environmentalists warn that netting tuna had already killed 80, 000 dolphins. There is concern for this because they are the most intelligent creature next to humans. Now the tuna boats sail behind the banner We Love Dolphins. The problem is that tuna love dolphins too, and love to swim with them. When the boats throw the nets around the dolphins, they just hope to find tuna below, not realizing the danger they are causing to other creatures besides the dolphin: Dolphins are not yet completely safe.
Giant fishing vessels towing 30 -miles-ling drift nets strip mine the sea of both mammals and fish. Their effectiveness is so complete that The United Nations has called for an end to their use. And then theres pollution. When half the Bottlenose dolphin population on the U. S. mid-Atlantic coast died, the government suspected a natural red tide was to blame.
But many scientists wondered whether PCBs found in the dead creatures, often at levels fifty times higher then the levels allowed in fish, had weakened them first. (Dolphins Get a New Reason 14) Finally the government understands that the nets are very dangerous to the dolphins and other cetaceans in the ocean. Now what the dolphins have to worry about is PCBs, and if they get attacked by anything then they will be defenseless because they will be so weak. Another problem the dolphins have to face is captivity: Hearts are won over when these marine mammals perform, but many critics believed that it is cruel to keep them in captivity (Riley 58). Laws were passed in South Carolina banning any public display of captive dolphins and whales and in Australia their capture and display has been ban since 1988.
The Miami Dolphins football team has a dolphin that is in a tank so it can perform for the fans during halftime. Lawsuits were filed against New England Aquarium over treatment of the dolphins. Whatever the future holds, the special relationship that has existed between the dolphins and humans since the time of Homer will continue. Even Scientists trained to observe life with strict objectivity, recognize the human urge to find a kindred spirit in dolphins. O Barry learned that happiness in life is the journey itself, not some place you arrive at.
Dolphins live that way Dolphins and man have always been close and will be like this for years to come. Dolphins live life in happiness because they dont realize the danger people cause them. Dolphins are fascinating creatures which people already know, but now people are understanding them better. We have lost a lot of dolphins over many of years and hopefully people, fishing boats, and chemical plants will watch what they are doing because they are destroying a species that one day could save our lives and be a valuable source. Look at what the dolphins did for the navy during wartime. They helped guide the ships through mine fields and spotted the enemies ships and other things to help the U.
S. in the war. Maybe Congress or even the president will pass a law that prohibits tuna boat fishing unless they can come up with a way not to kill or hurt the dolphins. There are still many dangers out in the ocean that are killing dolphins and hopefully in the future we will be able to find them all and cure them so not another single dolphin will die.
Remember dolphins are mammals and they are very close to us so we should protect them as we protect our own species. Bibliography: Works Cited Anderson, Ian. Dolphins Pay a High Price. New Scientist 15 Oct. 1994: 5. Anderson, Ian.
Tuna Fleet Banned from bombing dolphins. New Scientist 14 Apr. 1990: 19. Bonner, John Mackerel Lured Dolphins to Certain Death. New Scientist 22 Jan. 1994: 6 Carpenter, Betsy. What Price Dolphin? US and News World Report 13 Jun. 1994: 71 - 73 Coghlan, Andy.
Fake Fish Steer Dolphins Away from Danger. New Scientist 11 Apr. 1992: 18 Dobb, Horace. Follow the Wild Dolphin. New York: St.
Martins Press, 1982. Dolphins Get a New Reason to Dance. US. News and World Report 23 Apr. 1990: 14. Dolphins in Danger. New Scientist 11 Dec. 1993: 13 Hecht, Jeff.
Suit and Counter suit Over Dolphins Rights. New Scientist 12 Oct 1991: 15. Howard, William W. Protecting Dolphins.
Newsweek Mar/Apr 1996: 76. Mackenzie, Debora. Poisoned Dolphins Prompts Britain to Monitor Life in the Seas. New Scientist 14 Jul. 1990: 22 Marine Conservation News, Autumn. Dolphin Dilemmas. Environment Nov 1993: 22.
Min asian, Balcomb and Larry Foster. The Worlds Whales. Washington D. C. : Smithsonian Books, 1984 McIntyre, Joan. Mind in The Waters. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1974.
Pain, Stephanie. Dolphins Virus Threatens Last Remaining Monk Seals. New Scientist 3 Nov. 1990: 22 Pearce, Fred. Dead Dolphins Contaminated by Toxic Paint.
New Scientist 13 Jan. 1996: 5 Readers Digest. Readers Digest Great Encyclopedia Dictionary. United States: The Readers Digest Association 1975. Riley, David. Our Love of Dolphins has Turned into a Questionable Affair. Environment 28 Jul. 1994: 58 - 67 Swim With the Dolphins.
Newsweek 23 Apr. 1990: 76. Time Life. Whales and Other Sea Mammals. United States: Time Life Films 1977. Tuna Without the Guilt. Time 23 Apr. 1990: 63.
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