49,1 



In the interest of sdeaice, their capture should be stopped in all the oceans 

 and seas of the world. 



In an illustration following page 144 of the book, the author and 

 a dolphin are shown in a photogmph with the following caption : 



The teeth of a dolphin could turn him into a dangerous enemy, yet no dolphin 

 has ever attacked or molested a man, even in self-defense. The author here 

 makes a perfectly safe demonstration. 



This book tells, too, that the ancient Greeks set at liberty the dol- 

 phins that were caught accidentally in their nets while fishing. Why is 

 our coimtry guilty of the most enormous killing of small cetaceans in 

 the history of the world ? Because the use of pui-se-seine nets to save 

 labor in the capture of tunafish, automatically ensnares the porpoises 

 together with the tuna they run with in the sea. We are informed that 

 during the first 4 or 5 years of the use of the purse seines, no organized 

 effort whatsoever was made to release these friendly, trusting, and in- 

 telligent mammals from the nets, and an estimated million of porpoises 

 met their death through drowning. The purse-seine technique began 

 about 1958 or 1959. The fleet converted to its use in 1959-60, and for 

 yeai-s the tuna industry did not even bother to try to let the iwrpoises 

 who had led them to the lucrative tuna catches go free. Not until they 

 began to recognize that the numbers of porpoises were decreasing so 

 that the industry's ability to find tunafish was also decreasing, did it 

 develop the backing-down technique which saves some of the porpoises. 

 Even with this teclmique, an estimated one-quarter of the porpoises 

 are killed in each tuna "set," amounting to approximately 250,000 por- 

 poises drowned each year in the name of canned tunafish. 



Our country is responsible for the invention of the purse seine, an 

 unecological triumph of efficiency. Since we thought it up, it is up to us 

 to think of a way to get the porpoises out of it and to see that the other 

 tunafishing nations do the same. We must go beyond unilateral action 

 to stop purse seining in its present form. The testimony before this 

 subcommittee to the effect that the problem is virtually solved is not, 

 in the light of the best information we have been able to obtain, ac- 

 curate. We have been unable to find a realistic solution. We doubt that 

 one will be reached without the expenditure of far greater mental 

 effort and the fimds which such effort generally commands on the mar- 

 ket. We believe that the bill approved by this subcommittee should re- 

 quire immediate new effort to solve a problem which is paramount 

 in the marine mammals bill. It is the only area in which the United 

 States is guilty of active destruction of cetaceans in a manner which is 

 bringing about the extinction of the very species most celebrated by 

 poets and artists, the species who, according to Oppian, renders a man 

 impure if he "of his own will has been the cause of the destruction of 

 dolphins." I repeat this because the tuna industry wants the distin- 

 guished members of this subcommittee to believe that it "loves" the 

 dolphins. Of course, the industry loves the way the small cetaceans 

 lead them to the tuna, but the evidence shows that for years they were 

 completely hardhearted toward the drowning porpoises in their purse 

 seines. If they had any concern at all, it was with the cost of the labor 

 of getting the heavy "bodies of the dead porpoises out of the nets, not 

 with saving the porpoises' lives. 



We urge this subcommittee to put the tunafish industry to the test. 

 If. indeed, the finer nets now being tested will result in the rescue of 



