VIA FACSIMILE- May 24, 1996
President Bill Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Clinton:
I am writing you today as a supportive Democrat, a marine biologist and the owner of one of the newest tunaboats in the American fleet. While my boat is not a purse seiner, it nevertheless fishes for tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean using hook and line techniques and produces the finest restaurant-quality seafood available.
I am writing to ask that you reconsider your administration's support for the Panama Declaration and H.R. 2823 and S. 1420. As a marine biologist who has been involved in the Eastern Tropical Pacific tuna fishery for almost 30 years (since 1970) I want to assure you that implementing the Panama Declaration through H.R. 2823 and S. 1420 will not reduce bycatch (dolphins, fish and sea turtles) in the tuna purse seine fishery.
In order to reduce bycatch of fish and sea turtles we need to work to close those areas of the Gulf of Panama to purse seining during that portion of the year when small tuna are most prevalent there. This would substantially reduce the kill of small tuna, sharks, billfish and sea turtles known to occur in the Gulf of Panama in large numbers. Dr. Martin Hall of the IATTC has suggested to me that it might be possible to eliminate up to 60% of the bycatch associated with sets on "logs" if we could close purse seining in the Gulf of Panama during a portion of the year. Time-Area closures are a standard fishery management tool used throughout the US and around the world. Working to establish a Time-Area Closure in the Gulf of Panama should be one of our top priorities if we really want to reduce bycatch associated with the tuna purse seine fishery in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean.
In order to reduce bycatch of dolphins further we need to stop setting purse seine nets on spotter and spinner dolphins (the primary targets of the tuna purse seine fishery since those species are most commonly followed by yellowfin tuna) until the stocks of dolphins have recovered to levels equivalent to the Optimum Sustainable Populations. At present there is little argument that those two species of dolphins have been reduced by about 80% from their 1960 population levels. That means that more than 7 million dolphins have been killed in the fishery since about 1960.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has estimated that it may take up to 100 years for bottlenose dolphins off the east coast of the US to recover to their former levels from a disease outbreak during 1986-87, and the bottlenose populations were estimated to be reduced by the disease only about 50%. The estimates by the IATTC that spotter and spinner dolphins would recover to their former levels in only 25-30 years with continued fishing on them is simply ludicrous. The biology of bottlenose dolphins and spotter and spinner dolphins is too similar for such a marked difference in recovery times to be reasonable -- someone is way off the mark in their estimates of the time necessary for recovery, and I don't think its the NMFS.
If one aim of your administration is to allow non-US fishermen to import their "dolphin-safe" tuna into the US, and I think that is a reasonable idea. We could do that by allowing any tuna that was observed to be caught using a purse seine technique other than setting on dolphins to be imported. Rather than embargo tuna caught by setting on dolphins based on national compliance, we could develop a boat by boat compliance standard using the already existing IATTC 100% observer coverage in the ETP purse seine tuna fleet. That tuna caught by setting on dolphins would not be eligible for importing into the US, all other tuna caught in purse seines in the ETP would be.
I believe the goal of reducing bycatch in all fisheries is laudable. The best way to reduce the bycatch of all species in the ETP tuna purse seine fishery is to stop setting on dolphins AND implement fishery management techniques that will reduce the bycatch of fish, sharks and sea turtles at the same time. Those techniques are available; we just have to be persuasive and work with the international community to implement them. Signing a bill based on H.R. 2823 and S. 1420 will not get us there, but will result in the deaths of tens of thousands of additional dolphins and untold mortalities of fish, sharks and sea turtles. In addition, I believe your support for those bills will create major, avoidable political problems for you during the upcoming election.
You have asked me for my continuing support for your administration. I ask you for your support on this issue in return.
Sincerely,
John D. Hall, Ph.D.
Call your Congressperson at 202-225-3121 and tell them to reject H.R, 2823 and support H.R. 2856
Call Newt Gingrich, House Speaker at 202-225-0600 and tell him the same thing, he can stop H.R. 2823
Call the President at 202-456-1111 and tell him to withdraw his support for the dolphin-death bills S.1420/H.R. 2823.
Dr. Roger S. Payne to Members of Congress
http://www.earthisland.org/immp/jhall.html