Trying but failing to help, dolphin-safe tuna edition

In a classic illustration of the unintended consequences that well-intentioned environmental advocacy can generate, it turns out that dolphin-safe tuna is an ecological disaster. It turns out you can catch (lucrative) tuna by either following dolphins (in which case you also catch dolphins) or by attracting tuna with floating objects (in which case you also catch every other kind of ocean fish).
If you work out the math on this (and you don’t have to, because the environmental justice foundation did) , you find that 1 dolphin saved costs 382 mahi-mahi, 188 wahoo, 82 yellowtail and other large fish, 27 sharks, and almost 1,200 small fish.
Ouch. Oops.

No comments:

Post a Comment