Treaty Snagged

David S North examines the bizarre process that saw the United States’ vital Tuna Treaty delayed for more than a year.

PACIFIC ISLAND governments and the tuna industry have both suf fered as a result of seemingly re mote and unconnected matters, including New York City’s practice of dumping sew age sludge in the Atlantic Ocean; a natural disaster killing oysters and clams else where on America’s Atlantic coast; and the arrival of foreign-built barges on the Mis sissippi River.

No United States Government funds in the form of tuna fishing fees can go to island governments, and no US tunaboats can fish safely within island states’ EEZs because of these complications. They all relate to the internal politics of the Amer ican Government and have nothing to do either with tuna or the Pacific.

The Tuna Treaty, after much hard ne gotiating, was signed more than a year ago in Port Moresby; it has since been ratified by island governments, approved by a 89- 0 vote in the US Senate, and has President Reagan’s signature. But no funds can be voted until enabling legislation has moved through both houses of Congress . . . and therein lies the problem.

The tuna bill, which will allow the US Government and the tuna industry to pay island nations about SUS 12 million a year for the next several years for tuna harvests, was introduced in both the Senate and House of Representatives. The bill itself has no enemies and is regarded as some thing that must be passed to meet the na tion’s international commitments, but those very qualities are delaying passage.

What often happens when a non-con troversial piece of “must” legislation ap pears is that it becomes, in the jargon of Capitol Hill, a “Christmas tree”. Such a bill attracts extraneous ornaments amend ments dealing with other issues that prob ably could not be passed if they were not linked to a handy legislative vehicle.

When it came before the House of Rep resentatives Committee on Merchant Ma rine and Fisheries, the bill was pounced on by a New Jersey Congressman, William Hughes, who decided it would be a fine vehicle for his own personal crusade to prevent the City of New York dumping sewage sludge into the Atlantic Ocean off the shore of his state (and his district).

Hughes managed to graft his amend ment on to the tuna bill, but the New York City delegation (defending their city’s filthy practices) blocked the bill from consider ation until May, when it was finally passed sans ornaments.

The bill has also attracted other, less controversial, amendments. One, backed by Committee Chairman Congressman Jones from North Carolina, called for a disaster relief program to cope with red tide, a poisonous alga that kills oysters and clams off the coast of his district. The other sought to curb the use of foreign-built barges on America’s inland waterways, notably the Mississippi River.

Meanwhile, the tuna industry contin ues to face a more familiar problem: America’s love of dolphins and a con certed international effort by scientists and conservationists to curb their slaughter by tuna fishermen.

Several years ago Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, aimed largely at minimising the annual dolphin kill by tunaboats. Some species of dol phins (notably spotted dolphins and spin ner dolphins) swim with yellowfin tuna, and tunaboats set their huge purse seines when they see dolphins; it is possible for tunaboats to “back down” their boats and herd the dolphins out of the nets which now must be designed to open and allow dolphins to escape.

Congress said that the American in dustry, with 35 to 40 boats, was permitted to kill no more than 20,500 dolphins a year and placed observers on the boats to count the kills. Although figures must be esti mated for some tuna fisheries, the US Pa cific tuna fleet has in the past been responsible for the more or less accidental deaths of as many as 480,000 dolphins in a single season. In 1984 Congress said the Department of Commerce should extend similar regulations to foreign tuna in the States if they ignored the kill ratios.

In April, environmental groups in Cal ifornia and in Washington lowered the boom on the Department of Commerce for failing to implement the 1984 legislation; the Department had, over a period of four years, simply issued no regulations on the subject. Earth Island Institute and the Marine Mammal Fund sued the Com merce Department in a San Francisco court, saying the lack of regulations was contrary to US law; while a US Senate Committee grilled Commerce Depart ment officials on the same subject.

The Committee hearings secured more attention than the court case because the environmentalists showed gruesome film of dolphins drowning in a tuna purse-seine net: and a few days after the hearings, the long-delayed regulations were issued. □