All for One: The Issue of Bycatch

Okay, so as much as you might love sushi, tuna salad, or any other seafood, I think you could say, with a decent amount of confidence, that you would never eat a dolphin. Because, well, dolphins are dolphins. They're just awesome. Their visible presence in the ocean alone is enough to steal the attention of hundreds of beach goers at once. What if I told you that, in eating virtually any kind of seafood, it is almost certain that a dolphin was killed in order to put that meal on your plate?

Firstly, I think it's important to explain the idea of bycatch. This term refers to any sea creatures unintentionally caught in nets and thrown back into the ocean. Virtually every animal caught in these nets is killed. Dolphins are the most well-known victims of bycatch.

A graphic explanation of the bycatch process.

In 1988, various environmental and animal rights groups called for a boycott of three US-based brands of canned tuna on the grounds that tens of thousands of dolphins were being killed each year from becoming caught in fishing nets: Heinz's Starkist Tuna, Ralston Purina's Chicken of the Sea, and Pillsbury's Bumble Bee Tuna. Two years later, the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act was passed. This policy was meant to ensure consumers that the tuna they were buying came from a company that had made a conscious effort to avoid killing dolphins during the fishing process--'dolphin-safe,' as the labels read.

Of course, if you know anything about food labels that advertise some sort of humane treatment of animals (examples being 'free-range,' 'grass fed,' and 'cage free'), then you should know that they are, to be frank, utter bullshit. For example, egg-laying hens who are 'cage free' are simply on an extremely crowded floor instead of a tiny cage. They have the same amount of, if not less, space as they did when they were caged. A standard chicken cage is about 67 square inches--less area than a piece of paper (Eating Animals). This 'dolphin-safe' label is hardly different.

Cage free chickens

The main reason why these labels are useless is because these industries are barely regulated. The USDA simply does not have enough budget to go to slaughterhouses regularly, let alone to a fishing boat in the middle of the ocean, often not even in US waters. Therefore, it is very, very easy for corporations fishing for tuna to get away with excessive dolphin bycatch; if they don't report it and no one of consequence sees it, no one will ever know.

Furthermore, dolphins are certainly not the only sea creatures killed when fishing for tuna. 145 different species of sea life are regularly killed in large quantities when they become caught in nets, including great white sharks, manta rays, hammerhead sharks, killer whales, humpback whales, green turtles, several breeds of dolphins, among many, many other types of fish, whales, sharks, sea birds and sea turtles. Shrimp are hardly different; shrimp trawling accounts for 33 percent of global bycatch, and 80 to 90 percent of any one catch consists of bycatch--much of it endangered species. In the case of shrimp caught in Indonesia, an average of 26 pounds of other sea life are killed as bycatch for every pound of shrimp caught (Eating Animals).


It would be extremely difficult to deny the environmental effects of these fishing processes. Marine life habitats, particularly beautiful coral reefs, are destroyed in part by overfishing and processes called cyanide fishing and blast fishing. Overfishing, of course, depletes marine life population, which detracts from the diversity and ultimate health of reefs. Cyanide fishing, a process in which cyanide is used to stun fish to make them easier to catch, kills microorganisms that help keep reefs alive. Blast fishing destroys the structures of the reefs by blasting portions of the coral in order to make fish easier to catch. The destruction of coral reefs causes numerous problems for humans, such as water contamination and increased levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Hence, the death of coral reefs contributes directly to global warming and the overall death of our natural world.

As with many other environmental exigences caused by the ways in which humans interact with animals, the solution is extraordinarily simple: don't support the industry. If you care about and love whales, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles or any other sea life, it is absolutely hypocritical to eat seafood. Even if you couldn't give a shit about marine life, the destruction of the environment affects everything and everyone. Inarguably, the best way to solve a problem is to boycott the machine causing it. That is where our most important power lies as consumers: to reject the cruel processes of bycatch, the destruction of marine life and habitats, and, ultimately, the destruction of our own species.