Surely one of the most common forms of seafood enjoyed in North America must be canned tuna. Many a kitchen pantry is stocked with a can or two, handy for quick, nutritious sandwiches or a simple casserole. The tuna in many cans is Skipjack, a fish that grows up to 3 feet long. Skipjacks live a short life, have a high reproduction rate and a high natural mortality rate, and is a pretty good choice for responsible consumers. The problem comes, conservation-wise, with the way it is caught.
Tuna for canning is usually caught by purse seiners. The fishing boats set large nets around floating objects, often Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs), artificial floating structures that attract tuna. When the nets are gathered in, it’s not just tuna that are landed. By-catch can be up to 50% of the catch, and can include billfish, wahoo, triggerfish, barracuda, rainbow runners, sharks, rays and sea turtles. The tuna catch itself includes both mature fish and juveniles, and may include yellowfin and juvenile bigeye tuna, both less plentiful than skipjack. Nets may also be set around whales and catch whales as well as tuna The whales escape by breaking through the nets. Theoretically.
The cans of tuna I looked at were labelled “Dolphin Friendly”. The Environmental Justice Foundation offers this information about tuna and dolphins:
The capture of dolphins that were deliberately targeted in tuna purse-seine nets in the Eastern Pacific Ocean caused an outcry when first brought to pubic attention. Tuna’s association with dolphins makes detection at the surface easier, but dolphins deliberately encircled by the purse-seiners were frequently captured and killed in the process. Dolphin mortalities reached hundreds of thousands every year, and populations declined rapidly until the mid-1990s when technological and operational changes to reduce dolphin by-catch were successfully introduced. The efficacy of these measures, in conjunction with management actions to limit dolphin deaths per vessel, has lowered mortality levels for all dolphin populations to less than 0.1%.
In other words, dolphin as by-catch has not been a major issue for about 15 years and the dolphin-friendly labelling is something of a “red herring”. In The End of the Line, Charles Clover reports that he had difficulty securing figures about tuna fishing by-catch. However, he was able to secure a report about a tuna fishing fleet making its way across the Indian Ocean. About 20% of its catch was endangered bigeye tuna. There were also oceangoing turtles including loggerheads, leatherbacks and others, most of whom are endangered. Whales that were caught included minke and humpback. Other fish included great white sharks, now listed as vulnerable, slow-growing manta rays, stingray and spotted eagle ray, hammerhead sharks and other seagoing sharks. No dolphins.
All in all, it would appear that a can of tuna results in the death of a lot more than just the skipjack tuna that ends up in the can. The most amazing thing is that all this lost sealife comes with such a small price tag. Check out the bin in the opening photo. If the cans were any cheaper, they’d be giving them away at the store entrance. What a waste.
Willow House Chronicles 
We bought a block of tofu yesterday. Please don’t write about soybean bycatch. š¦
Seriously, though, I just watched an excellent 8-minute video that Lolarusa posted, concerning bottled water. Part of the video looks at all the pollution caused not only by the empties but by manufacturing them in the first place. And suddenly I’m thinking, That’s a lot of tins in that grocery store bin (not to mention my kitchen cupboard).
Yow, don’t get me started on bottled water!
All you can do is try to stay informed and make the best choices possible. Many people don’t seem to think much about where their food comes from, although that seems to be changing more and more.
Sometimes it becomes overwhelming, eh? It seems that everything we do has a negative impact. I just learned that Gor-Tex is a major contributor to harmful chemicals in our households (like Teflon). And wouldn’t you know that I’ve just purchased my first set of boots that have GorTex. I’m still trying to figure out how they are harmful.
And ScotchGuard – the apparent cause for a lot of thyroid problems in domestic cats.
Better living through chemistry? I think not.
It is overwhelming, and I hear people all the time saying that there’s simply too much to worry about it all, so they don’t worry about any of it. I think that these days what we need is a really solutions-oriented approach – to say, yes, our food has a lot of problems, but these tomatoes from my backyard are delicious, I know exactly what went into them, and now I’ll can them with the same jars I used last year. Of course, for some things like seafood the answers aren’t obvious (know anyone who does sell ethical tuna?) and for other things like ScotchGuard the answer really is that we never needed them in the first place, but it can be hard to convince people of that, nevermind to find products without it or even know whether your products have things like that in them.
barfootheart — Perhaps, like you mentioned in your post, we should stay informed abut environmental issues rather than be influenced through media marketing. Perhaps we need to protest the chemical intrusions into our lives by being an informed, authentic, buyer– not a buyer that follows the “green fads” commercialism. When buying use the doctrine of Caveat emptor. Your post contributes to educating the public about the concerns that we need to address worldwide. — barbara
Yes, so much of the stuff that is supposed to make our lives better is actually poisoning us.
Thanks to all who have left thoughtful comments on “fishy” issues. It’s good to know that, even in this world that often seems so crazily out of control, there are other concerned people.
The more I read about commercial food production, the more I want to try to grow as much of my own food as possible, and source what I can of the balance from local farms. There’s obviously some work involved in doing so, but a packet of seeds is much less expensive, both financially and environmentally, than the produce one would buy from the store. The seasonality of it would take some adjustment, since we’re so used to just being able to buy whatever we need when we need it from the store. Also, I might need a bigger freezer. š
Dan’s fishing license allows him to take fish from our local lakes. As much as I’m not a fish person, I wonder how healthy fish taken from such sources are to eat. Dan’s commented from time to time he’d like to eat more fish (of the fillet sort), but neither of us could bring ourselves to kill the catch, nor do we have any clue about cleaning.