----- forwarded message -----
Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 05:52:42 -0700
From: Teresa Binstock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Two Scientists Contend U.S. Suppressed Dolphin Studies
Two Scientists Contend U.S. Suppressed Dolphin Studies
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/politics/09TUNA.html
WA$HINGTON, Jan. 8 — Two former government scientists who spent years
investigating stress in dolphin populations charged this week that superiors at
their federally financed laboratory shut down their research because it clashed
with policy goals of the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The scientists, who worked at different times over the past decade at the
Southwest Fisheries Science Center in San Diego, said their research indicated
that the practice of chasing and encircling dolphins to catch tuna exposed the
dolphins to dangerous amounts of stress.
The accusations, by Dr. Albert Myrick, a wildlife biologist, and Dr. Sarka
Southern, a research associate, came days after the Bush administration relaxed
the criteria for declaring tuna netted by Mexican and other foreign fishing
boats to be "dolphin safe."
In making that declaration last week, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans said
that chasing and corralling dolphins and the tuna that often accompany them into
purse nets had "no significant adverse impact" on the dolphins.
The ruling cleared the way for Mexican and other Latin American tuna producers
to place a dolphin-safe label on cans for American shelves. The foreign
producers seek the designation — which many consumers demand — to be competitive
with American companies, which do not chase dolphins to catch tuna.
But this week, Dr. Myrick said he decided in 1995 to retire from the center,
which is part of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, after he was forbidden to continue his stress research. Dr.
Southern, who helped pioneer the search for a molecular signature of stress,
said that last year she was ordered to curtail her work after discovering signs
of chronic stress in a large number of dolphins.
For nearly a decade, Clinton and Bush administration officials have sought to
grant Mexico the dolphin-safe designation, as that government has taken steps to
reduce dolphin kills.
Scientists studying dolphins in the waters off the coasts of Mexico and Central
America have struggled to understand why the populations have failed to
regenerate, even as mortality rates have sharply fallen, from hundreds of
thousands a year to fewer than 3,000. A leading theory is that stress caused by
the chase and netting — or the separation of cows from calves — has disrupted
the dolphins' ability to reproduce.
In 1997, Congress ordered NOAA and the fisheries center to prepare a study to
determine if the purse net fishing was harmful. A top official at the agency,
William T. Hogarth, said the study, which was released last week, was "not
conclusive."
Officials at NOAA and the Commerce Department said there had been no effort to
suppress research. The officials said that in the case of both scientists
financing shortfalls and problems with peer reviews, not political
considerations, ended their work.
"We suppressed no research," said Dr. Michael Tillman, the director of the
fisheries center.
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said she would call for hearings
in the Senate Commerce Committee to determine whether the Bush administration
was running roughshod over the scientific evidence or suppressing research. Ms.
Boxer, who wrote the original 1990 legislation that set out criteria for
dolphin-safe fishing, said she would introduce a bill on Thursday seeking to
overturn Mr. Evans's ruling.
Dr. Southern, a biophysical chemist, arrived at the fisheries center in 1998
under a grant to develop a technique for measuring stress in skin samples. After
conducting an analysis on 900 dolphins, she established a link between animals
that showed molecular evidence of stress and those that had been in most contact
with the tuna fleets, she said.
But last February, her supervisor ordered her to withhold her findings, she
said. "He came to my office and said that I have to understand that there's
science and there's politics, and the politics dictates what sort of science can
be used," Dr. Southern said.
A few weeks later, Dr. Southern said, her research was terminated, and her
laboratory was dismantled.
Stephen Reilly, who led the stress research at the center, said Dr. Southern's
grant had expired. While her research was promising, he said, she ran into
problems with the peer review process, with experts demanding more data. "We
didn't have the money or the time," Mr. Reilly said.
Dr. Myrick, who was one of the first to study the indirect effects on dolphins
of chase and capture, said he concluded in the mid-1990's that contact with tuna
fishermen had resulted in lower pregnancy rates and the separation of calves
from cows and otherwise had prevented the population from rebounding.
He said he was ordered to abandon his stress physiology project when Mexico was
heavily lobbying the Clinton administration to relax its dolphin-safe rules.
"They said, `No more, you can work on something else,' " Dr. Myrick said.
Dr. Tillman, the center's director, blamed severe budget cuts for curtailing the
work. "There was no funding for the tuna-dolphin research at that time," he
said.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
