U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction to preserve current "dolphin-safe" requirements. The Bush administration sought to weaken dolphin-safe standards earlier this year due to pressure from Mexico and other Latin American countries who have been lobbying for a lessening of the standards so that they can sell their tuna in the U.S. The "dolphin-safe" label has guaranteed consumers for more than a decade that the tuna they're purchasing was not caught using methods that chase, harass or kill dolphins.

The Bush administration went ahead with their plan to weaken current dolphin-safe standards based on a finding that the use of purse seine nets to deliberately chase and net dolphins in order to catch the tuna that swim beneath has "no significant adverse impacts" on depleted dolphin populations (see previous story). However, thousands of dolphins, as well as other marine wildlife species such as sea turtles, continue to die in the nets of foreign fishermen each year.

The dolphin-safe label was created in the late 1980s in response to pressure from animal welfare organizations and consumers who were concerned with dolphin injuries and death caused by certain tuna fishing practices. Tuna that was labeled dolphin-safe assured consumers that no dolphin was chased, harassed or netted during the fishing process. Following the creation of the labels, the entire U.S. tuna fleet adopted dolphin-safe fishing practices.

To learn the latest developments and find out what you can do to protect dolphins from the tuna industry, visit EII's website at www.earthisland.org.