POPA:
AZORES FISHERIES OBSERVER PROGRAMME

THE HISTORY OF POPA

1 The Dolphin Safe concept

In the Eastern Tropical Pacific occurs an association between dolphins and yellow fin tunas: the fishes swim beneath the dolphins. During the 1950’s, tuna trawlers started to take advantage of this fact: they looked for dolphins at the surface and then, positioned the nets all around them, capturing every animal within that area. In consequence, this technique was responsible for a vast mortality of dolphins that reached 120000 individuals per year during the 1980’s. Those species became increasingly endangered, and several NGOs (eg: Earth Island Institute, USA) and consumer associations started to pressure the tuna industry and the government of the USA to change this reality. Those actions led to the “Dolphin safe” concept and logo which only applies to fisheries that do not harm or kill dolphins. Since that time, commercialization of non certified tuna is prohibited in the US. In order to monitor those fisheries, observervation programmes were initiated and through them it became possible to collect in situ data regarding interactions between cetaceans and fisheries as well as other important scientific records. From 1992 on, dolphin mortality started to decrease (it reached a maximum of 4000 individuals per year) which proved the efficiency of referred measures.

>> 2 .The capture of cetaceans in the Azores