So powerful has Earth Island become that tuna companies live in fear of being blacklisted, and help fund its efforts to track their fishing habits. To say this is a rare turn in the growing global battles between activists and corporations is an understatement. It’s as if lumber companies were paying the tree huggers of Earth First to police their logging operations. At least 97 percent of tuna on the world’s supermarket shelves now meets Earth Island rules on what is dolphin safe, a standard so rigid that many other wildlife activists consider it too radical. So bold has the group become that its activists are sure they will win a raging battle with a few governments of Latin America that are the last holdouts against Earth Island’s authority. They’re probably right.
Earth Island’s power dates to the tuna wars of the late 1980s, when it got hold of a video showing dolphins dying in tuna-fishing nets. For reasons that are not well understood, tuna tend to swim under dolphins in the Eastern (but not Western) Pacific, and fishermen were catching tuna by casting nets around schools of dolphins. The video of dolphins drowning in the nets inspired a consumer boycott and a federal law setting standards for companies wanting to use a “dolphin safe” label. Based on the Earth Island guidelines, the law effectively banned fishermen from “setting on dolphins,” lest they face the wrath of Americans raised on the popular TV character Flipper the friendly dolphin. “Earth Island was buying full-page ads and going to the retail stores,” recalls David Burney, head of the U.S. Tuna Association. “When you’ve got your customers saying, ‘We won’t buy tuna caught in association with dolphins,’ you’ve got to do something.”
The industry quickly agreed to play by dolphin-safe rules, in large part by giving up fishing in the Eastern Pacific. Earth Island held it to the promise. In 1991 activist Brenda Killian exposed a Thai supplier of “dolphin deadly” tuna to Bumble Bee, one of the big three U.S. canners, and wound up in a TV debate on “Good Morning America” with the company president. To everyone’s surprise, he admitted that Killian was right, and soon invited Earth Island to monitor the company’s operations. “It was like David and Goliath,” Killian recalls. “He was Goliath.” Once Bumble Bee agreed, the other major U.S. brands had little choice but to follow. Earth Island was reborn as a quasi-official regulatory power.
The group began targeting Europe, threatening tuna firms with the same tactics that had been so effective in the United States. To this day, Europe has no labeling laws or tuna regulators, but it does have Earth Island. The key to Earth Island’s influence is the list of “certified” dolphin-safe companies that it faxes throughout the industry each month. Currently the list includes 262 firms in 36 countries and territories. Occasionally Berman sends out bulletins about companies not on the list, with a warning that anybody caught dealing with them will be dropped.
The industry pays close attention. Tuna canners cancel supply contracts with letters saying, “We are not to deal with entities that are not themselves accredited by EII.” Companies send tips about violators to the EII, as if it were a government enforcement authority. “This is a competitive industry,” says Killian, who started saving dolphins 13 years ago by chaining herself to tuna boats, but now operates in a business suit. “I get calls every day that so-and-so is buying deadly-dolphin fish.”
Now she wins her battles simply by threatening a transgressor with negative publicity. Last year Killian discovered that a Venezuelan company had sold tuna caught with dolphins to Spain’s biggest tuna firm, Grupo Calvo. Arguing that a tuna broker had lied to them about how the fish had been caught, Calvo officials pleaded to stay on the list. Earth Island agreed, but only after the company destroyed 400 tons of fish. “We let the monitors into the factory. We didn’t want any problems,” says Ramon Calvo, company director of operations. No other European tuna executive contacted for this story would let his name be printed. “Earth Island can completely ruin your business,” says one.
The industry even pays an informal tax to sustain Earth Island as its self-appointed regulator. The monitoring program costs about $400,000 a year, and at least a quarter is raised from companies. Tuna executives say they have little choice but to pay, if only to stay in the good graces of Earth Island. The importers’ association in Germany gives $50,000 a year. Until recently, the British industry group gave five cents for each case of tuna sold. Earth Island is considering designing its own label, copyrighting it in Europe and charging companies for the right to use it.
Critics say Earth Island is too extreme to be a fair regulator. In 1995 the United States agreed to allow several Latin American nations to label their tuna dolphin safe if they lowered their dolphin kill rates. By means of new methods that allow dolphins to escape tuna nets, the yearly kill for Latin fleets has fallen from 132,000 in 1986 to fewer than 2,000 last year. The reduction was enough for the U.S. Commerce Department, which has tried to grant Latin fleets the dolphin-safe label, only to be blocked by Earth Island in court. Earth Island believes even one dead dolphin is too many, a stand other activists consider unfair. “We have seen a success rate [in Latin America] that is unmatched by any other fishery regime in the world,” says Tom Grasso of the World Wildlife Fund. “The United States needs to honor its end of the deal.”
Mexico, nearly shut out of the world market by Earth Island, is growing impatient. It has threatened retaliation at the World Trade Organization if the United States does not change the labeling law, which is crippling its fishing industry. Several canneries have gone out of business and more than a third of the fishing fleet has been sold off. Jose Carranza, owner of Mexico’s biggest tuna processor, Pescados Industrializados S.A., in the Pacific coast city of Mazatlan, says yearly sales to Europe have fallen from 90,000 tons in the late 1980s to less than 10,000 tons today because “the buyers are afraid” of Earth Island. Others see a more dire force at work. “Earth Island is an arm of StarKist to control the markets,” says Carlos Hussong, president of Mexico’s fishing-industry group. “This is a protection of the U.S. industry.” StarKist and Earth Island say that’s nonsense.
Given Earth Island’s power, it’s not surprising it has inspired conspiracy theories. Even a change in U.S. trade policy won’t alter the buying practices of the tuna industry, because the U.S. government is not the final authority here. “None of our companies would buy from anybody not on the Earth Island list,” says Burney, of the U.S. industry group. “We don’t want any problems. Earth Island is powerful.” In fact, Mexico may be hard pressed to defend its domestic market, much less expand sales abroad. Earth Island is considering a consumer-awareness campaign against dolphin-deadly tuna in the one market Mexican tuna fishermen have left: Mexico.
