Dolphin Safe Tuna

Being a college student in a dorm room I get a lot of canned foods for when I’m hungry. The other day I bought some cans of tuna at the store and noticed that they had a dolphin safe label on them. I thought it was very interesting how they used this label to environmentally communicate to the public and encourage people to buy their product.
I decided to look online and find out what the story was behind these labels and why they are needed. I discovered that without the use of alternative fishing methods hundreds of thousands of dolphins die from the industry using driftnets, gillnets, and purse seine nets. These methods don’t focus exclusively enough on the target species and therefore have a large bi-catch, which includes dolphins.
These labels represent organizations that set standards for the fishermen to follow. If the fishermen harvest tuna in a manner that minimizes the accidental killing of dolphins according to the organizations standards, then they get to put the label on their cans. This label attracts customers and makes the cans more marketable. There are many different labels all with different standards, but they all strive to eliminate the killing of dolphins while still helping tuna sales by putting their label on the cans. Some of these include labels made by United States Department of Commerce, EarthTrust, Earth Island Institute, Greenseas and Princes foods.
This is a great example of an environmental condensation symbol. It communicates how you can make a difference just by making a decision to buy a brand that has a dolphin safe label on it. It gets you emotionally involved because no one wants dolphins killed for no reason. We just want our tuna.