Some "food" for thought

I stumbled across something the other day that I found VERY interesting. Anyone in my family, or any of my friends for that matter, who know anything about me will tell you that I love animals. I love all animals. Maybe saying I love all animals is stretching it (I certainly don't love leeches, june bugs, worms, etc), but what I can say is that I respect the place each animal holds in the food chain. For example, over the weekend I helped a family of ducks go from my yard, up the street, and across the street after I stopped traffic in both directions, so they could get to the lake.

Despite loving animals, I am not a vegetarian. And one animal that I enjoy eating is fish, particularily tuna. When I first learned that in the fishing of tuna, many dolphins are also caught and killed, I immediately became a huge supporter of what is called "Dolphin Safe Tuna", a symbol found on tuna cans that claim to have not been involved in the killing of ANY dolphins.

So on this website, I was given some insight. What does dolphin safe really mean? Well the website outlines 3 ways of catching tuna. The most practical of the 3 being to either throw something that floats into the water, wait for the dolphins to be attracted to it, and then throw a net down to catch them. Another way, is to follow dolphins and volia! You find tuna.

Using a floating device might catch and kill 25 dolphins after throwing down a net.

Following dolphins and throwing down a net can catch and kill about 4000 dolphins.

Using a floating device is what's known as Dolphin Safe Tuna.

However, I can see now the negative aspect to dolphin safe tuna.

Looking at a floating device vs. following dolphins you get the following numbers:

130 million small tuna vs 70,000
Over 500,000 mahi mahi (a dorado) vs 100
Over 12,000 other small fish vs 3
200 other large fish vs 3
Over a THOUSAND sea turtles vs 100.
Over 6,000 bill fish vs. 520.
Over 100,000 sharks vs NONE
Over 100,000 wahoos vs NONE
50 Trigger fish vs NONE
Over 2,000 Yellowtails vs NONE
And over 30,000 rainbow runners vs, you guessed it...NONE.

Here's an interesting thought. Dolphins aren't endangered. Many of the other species listed above are, or are at great risk of becoming, endangered. Seems like it's an effort to protect one species not at risk at the cost of many others who are. Intelligent? I don't think so.

Just some food for thought.