In my first exploration of the issue of by-catch in commercial fishing, I looked at the devastating effects of fishing not simply for the "target" species, but on those animals who are unlucky enough to be caught in the lines, traps, hooks, and nets not meant for them. In this second part, I further explore this issue and take a look at how the dolphins, sea turtles, and seals - animals for whom we have affection - fare in our pursuit of gastronomic pleasure.

DOLPHINS
The public became aware of the problems of by-catch in the 1980s when campaigns were led against tuna companies for harming and killing dolphins when tuna were the targets. The relationship between dolphins and tuna is that yellowfin tuna follow and school beneath dolphins, so fishing fleets would look for dolphins on the surface, herd them and encircle them and set out the nets to catch the tuna – ensnaring the dolphins at the same time. An estimated 5 to 7 million dolphins have been killed by this fishing method over the past four decades, the largest marine mammal kill in history.

In 1986, the International Marine Mammal Project organized a campaign, including a consumer boycott of tuna, in order to urge U.S. tuna companies to end the practice of intentionally chasing and netting dolphins, and to adopt "Dolphin Safe" fishing practices to prevent the drowning of dolphins in tuna nets. Dolphins are mammals and don’t have gills, so they drown while stuck in the nets underwater. There are other standards that a company must adhere to in order to label their tuna “dolphin-safe,” but it’s worth noting that just because it says “dolphin-safe” or “dolphin-friendly,” it doesn’t mean that dolphins were not killed in the production of a particular tin of tuna. It means that the fleet which caught the tuna did not specifically target a pod of dolphins.

Though the numbers are down since new techniques are used to catch tuna (400,000 dolphins killed annually in the 1960s and 100,000 in the 1980s), several thousand dolphins are still killed each year to satisfy our appetites for tuna. Dolphins — social, playful, intelligent animals — are also killed as by-catch in nets targeting trout. According to a 2003 BBC story by Alex Kirby called “Nets Kill 800 Cetaceans a Day,” more than 800 dolphins, porpoises, and whales die every day as they get tangled in fishing nets – that’s 300,000 every year.

TURTLES
Turtles are also common victims. Sea turtles are killed by the thousands. It’s estimated that more than 20,000 sea turtles die each year after getting hooked on longlines. Six of the seven species of marine turtles are listed as "Endangered" or "Critically Endangered," and the outlook is increasingly grim. In the Pacific, leatherbacks are heading for extinction, fast, and in the Mediterranean, green turtle numbers have plummeted. Though pollution and disease contribute to this, the nets and long-lines of fishing fleets play a major role in their demise.

According to Duke University, which recently conducted a global assessment of the problem, more than 250,000 loggerhead and 60,000 leatherback turtles are snared each year by commercial longline fishing, and tens of thousands die. The authors estimated that longline fleets from 40 different countries set about 1.4 billion hooks in the studied year of 2000, the equivalent of about 3.8 million hooks each day. Again, longlines are fishing lines that can stretch for 40 miles and dangle thousands of individually baited hooks. They are set at optimal depths and times to catch tuna and swordfish, shark, and other fish, and according to the data studied, the turtles most often die – not by drowning, by some kind of injury related to hooking or entangling.

SEALS
Another byproduct of the fishing industry is the brutal death of baby seals. Because of the overfishing of cod by the Canadian fishing industry in eastern Canada –- in the Atlantic Ocean for Newfoundland’s northeast coast — the cod population declined to such a degree that the government stepped in the late 1980s and imposed severe restrictions on commercial fishing. But it was too late. Because of overfishing, the fishery collapsed, never recovered, and the ecosystem changed such that it was no longer able to support cod fish.

What does all this have to do with the seals? Scapegoating the seals for the collapse of the cod fisheries, fishermen demanded a kill. In 2003, the Canadian government bowed to pressure from the fishing industry, and ordered the massacre of hundreds of thousands of seals, declaring war on the seals in hopes that massive seal kills will bring back the cod and keep their disgruntled fishermen working.

In fact, cod is not a major food source of the harp and hood seal diet. Further, recent evidence suggests that killing seals contributes to bacterial infestation on the ocean floor which leads to hypoxia, a condition in which patches of ocean lose all the dissolved oxygen and are unable to sustain cod or fish or marine life of any kind. However, these facts seem to have been brushed aside by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans in their efforts to justify and continue the slaughter.

During the 3-year period of 2003-2005, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) allowed a kill quota of 975,000 baby and adult harp seals and 30,000 adult hood seals. When the "struck and lost" seals are included (these are the animals who’ve been hit but lost in the icy waters), the total killed exceeds one million, making this the largest marine mammal slaughter in the world.

To find as many avenues as possible to profit from the annual, government-subsidized slaughter, Canada exports sealskins (furskins/pelts and leather), seal oil, and seal meat. Unfortunately, the demand for seal pelts has sky-rocketed, especially in Europe. Though seal meat isn’t doing so well, the Canadian government is trying to find markets for the bodies of the skinned seals. The kill continues to this day. The quota for the 2007 massacre was 270,000. Visit www.protectseals.org for more information.

TSUNAMI
Finally, while we’re talking about by-products/effects (not just "by-catch"), there is another by-product of consuming aquatic animals that went under the radar screen when an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in southeast Asia destroyed lives and communities at the end of 2004. Over 200,000 human lives were lost and an uncounted number of non-human lives. Experts agree that the destruction of coral reefs and mangrove trees played a significant role in the destruction caused by the tsunami. In many countries across Asia, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, mangroves stood all along the coasts in shallow waters. They offered protection against things like tsunamis. Over the last 20-30 years, they were cleared for shrimp or prawn farms. The shrimps and prawns are sold to Europeans and other foreigners at a price that does not take into account the environmental cost. The destruction of the coasts was also due to the building of large resorts where they should never have been built.

Of course, there are efforts to rebuild the shrimp farms, and we’ll see if we learn anything from the disaster. I’m a little skeptical, considering the fact that worldwide, shrimp farming has grown at an annual average of over 18% since 1970, and is the single most valuable internationally traded seafood product worldwide, valued at an estimated $50-60 billion at the point of retail.

BEYOND BY-CATCH
The cost of our consumption of aquatic animals is extremely high - not just to the target species who were living perfectly peaceful lives before we come along and snatch them out of their homes, but also to the non-target species and entire ecosystems. And this is just one aspect of this issue. We have yet to talk about all the others, including factory-farm raising fish; the pollution in the ocean; the fishing of smaller fish to feed to the larger fish we raise to eat; the toxins, such as mercury, in the fish that we consume when we eat their bodies; the research that supports the fact that fish feel pain; the human health concerns of eating fish; or the ethical considerations of “catch and release sport fishing."

We have yet to explore the many problems with consuming salmon – for instance, the problems with farm-raised Atlantic salmon, which is probably one of the worst choices we could make: the fish are raise in cramped pens in the ocean, and their waste pollutes the surrounding water and spreads disease to wild fish. In the Pacific, escaped farm-raised salmon also compete with wild fish for food, and interfere with spawning. Furthermore, salmon are fed a diet of fish meal (tinted to give their flesh that characteristic "salmon pink" color) which further depletes the ocean food chain. Wild Washington or Oregon salmon is a poor choice, since overfishing and habitat destruction have endangered many species. And remember: the fish have to consume Omega-3 fatty acids from phytoplankton, from algae. If they don’t consume it, they don’t have it in their flesh. If they don’t get it, we don’t get it. So again, go right to the source for your nutrients.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A recent issue of Fish and Fisheries magazine cited more than 500 research papers on fish intelligence, proving that fish are smart, that they can use tools, and that they have impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures. The introductory chapter said that fish are "steeped in social intelligence, pursuing Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment and reconciliation … exhibiting stable cultural traditions and cooperating to inspect predators and catch food." A wonderful U.K. Guardian story explores these notions, quoting Dr. Culum Brown, a specialist in fish behaviour at Macquarie University in Sydney, and co-author of Fish Cognition and Behaviour. He says, "I spend half my life telling people fish aren’t stupid. Fish are more intelligent than they appear. The trouble is that most aquaculture treats fish as if they are little robots. They are not."

My hope is that we begin to question the criteria we use to determine the value of an animal’s life, who deserves to be spared pain, and who has a right to live free from harm, free from suffering, free from premature and unnecessary death.

My hope is that our hearts are large enough to include not only those with whom we can identify, with whom we can communicate but also those who don’t look us, those who don’t sound like us. May we be as fascinated by our differences as we are consoled by our similarities. We don’t need to travel to other planets to find interesting, exotic, different life forms. They exist right here, right now, on the earth and in the sea.