The extreme ill effects of human activity in the ocean have been documented for decades. From irresponsible fishing techniques and oil spills to plastic pollution and global warming, the havoc humanity has brought to marine life has threatened entire species. How can we turn the tide and begin to protect what we have previously harmed? 

Dave Phillips is a Co-Founder of the Earth Island Institute and Director of its International Marine Mammal Project. The International Marine Mammal Project has been a global leader in protecting whales, dolphins, and their ocean habitats. Dave has represented marine mammal conservation issues at international conventions, including the International Whaling Commission, and has testified before Congress. The U.N.’s Environment Programme granted him its Leadership Award in honor of his efforts to protect dolphins from indiscriminate fishing techniques. In 2009, he helped open the David Brower Center, a LEED Platinum-rated green building that serves as a hub for the environmental movement.

Here, Dave discusses the ways in which he’s seen and participated in marine conservation initiatives that have saved the lives of millions of animals, and he addresses the work that still must be done.

The following is an edited and excerpted transcript from a Bioneers 2023 panel conversation.

This is a bad time to be an ocean campaigner. There are so many threats piling up, and they have such incredible impacts on marine mammals. It’s a lot of bad news. So I’m going to try something different.

Stories about successes can help change public attitude, and they’re a big part of what we do. So I’m going to tell you a story.

A big secret was happening out in the ocean. The secret was that tuna fleets found that they could chase and set nets on dolphins as a way to catch massive amounts of tuna that swim beneath the dolphin populations. It was happening way far out at sea, and it was killing an unbelievable number of dolphins. It actually turned out to be the worst killing of marine mammals in world history – seven million dolphins were killed from the time that that technique was first identified in 1959 up until the time that we got involved with it in the ‘80s. 

We had to figure out how we could do something about this. We knew that it was happening, but we didn’t know much about it. It had been a big secret of the industry. 

We had the good fortune of having a volunteer with us who had been an observer on fishing vessels. He got tired of all the things that we were trying — the scientific reports and the testimony to Congress and all this other stuff that wasn’t working. He said, “I’m going to go out  on a boat, and I’m going to capture footage, because that’s what we need to actually turn this situation around.” His name was Sam LaBudde. 

I said to Sam, “You’ve got to be out of your mind. You’re never going to get onto a boat, and if you did, you’d be lucky if you got back.” 

He said, “I’m going.” And off he went.

He drove down to Mexico and called me up. He said, “Hey, I just got a job as a cook on a Panamanian tuna crew, and we’re leaving tomorrow morning. I’ve got a video camera, and I’m going.”

Sam went out on the vessel, and he was gone for about six weeks. When he came back, he called me and told me he had captured incredible footage. He sent it to me.

It was all there. Everything – dolphins being caught under the nets, trying to rise to the surface and breathe but unable,  being ripped up and drawn through the power blocks of the vessels. 

We said, “Sam, get back here. We’ve got to get this out.” And we did. And the world changed.

All of a sudden, the press went crazy. The tuna companies were on the defensive. Members of Congress wanted to see the footage. It opened up this avenue. 

Over the next 12 months, we reached a deal with Tony O’Reilly, who owned HJ Heinz, the parent company (at the time) of the largest tuna company in the world: StarKist. He said they were done; getting out of it. Their vessels would no longer use this technique. And we made an announcement in Washington, DC. The agreement that they made was codified into law in the United States. All the other tuna companies started dropping, just falling like dominoes. Today, there are over 800 tuna companies, processors, and retailers around the world that have adopted the dolphin-safe standard. They’re no longer buying and selling any tuna that’s caught by chasing and netting dolphins. 

The dolphin mortality, which at that time was over 100,000 per year, has now dropped by 98%.  It changed their world, and it showed people, the consumers, the people that had risen up from this, that they could really make a difference. 

It was a wild ride, and it changed history. 

Those types of campaigns have a way of energizing people. They have a way of forcing change. They have a way of telling the secrets that we can’t see. Telling stories really makes a difference. So that’s the story of how we ended the largest killing of dolphins in world history. 

Marine Conservation Today

Overfishing and other human activities that threaten our marine life, including marine mammals, are so pernicious. Over 80% of our world fisheries are already fully exploited, over exploited, or in a state of collapse. Three-quarters of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction under the red list of the Union for Conservation of Nature. 

Overfishing is completely out of control. How did it get that way? It started with the boats. There’s so much more capacity and so many more vessels. They’re so much bigger. They stay out longer. They have such powerful engines now. They can drag nets that are miles long. There’s no way that the fish can sustain throughout the techniques that are being used in the fishing industry. It’s causing huge disruption and collapses. 

When we think of overfishing, we tend to think of just the fish species. But these fisheries are also having huge impacts on marine mammals and turtles because of the bycatch issue. They’re causing such great amounts of bycatch that it’s threatening other species.

Ocean warming is a terribly difficult intractable problem. Warmer waters are disrupting ocean currents and jeopardizing food availability for many species. Orcas in the Pacific Northwest are right on the edge of extinction due to a variety of issues, but not the least of which is food availability. Their food has been depleted by the overfishing of salmon, by the dams in the rivers, and by the warming of the oceans. We’re seeing a lot of that type of cascading effect.

There’s big talk about how the world is shifting to alternative fuels, but the oil and gas industry is actually growing dramatically. And you don’t have to look far to see its impacts, not only from a global warming perspective, but also from the direct action of oil spills. Look at the number of birds, the number of sea turtles, the number of marine mammals that were killed because of BP Horizon. We need to have a global phasedown and phaseout of all oil and gas ocean drilling. It needs to stop. It’s going to be difficult because of the power of big oil, but it has to happen.

The scourge of ocean plastic is just unbelievable right now. At current rates of rising ocean plastic pollution, by 2050, there could be more plastic in the ocean by weight than fish. The global plastic industry is on a trajectory to triple by 2060. And it’s all fossil fuel. It’s all big oil. Big plastic is big oil. More and more animals are being found entangled in nets. There are humpback whales that drag nets all the way from Alaska to Hawaii, and they’re arriving in Hawaii covered in plastic nets. It’s become the single worst threat to the survival of whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. Every year, an estimated 300,000 dolphins, porpoises, and whales are killed by entanglement in plastic fishing gear.

I didn’t tell you my story of stopping commercial whaling. But we saved the whales. We stopped most of the commercial whaling, only to have those threats replaced by pernicious plastic pollution.

In the last few months, a sperm whale washed up on the shores of Kaua. When they did the necropsy, its stomach contained three types of fishing nets, plastic bags, seven hagfish, fish traps, plastic buoys, fishing line. It starved because its intestines were blocked from being able to process food.

There’s a lot of news now about the High Seas Treaty. It just was adopted and negotiated on March 6th of this year. It’s a big deal, and I think it’s a really good thing. It focuses on the waters that are outside the 200-mile zones, outside the areas that are controlled by jurisdictions, by countries. This part of the ocean is largely a free-for-all. There’s very little regulation. This treaty is aimed at that, with a goal of having it be part of the 30% of the ocean that is protected. It’s a good start. It’s going to be difficult to get it enacted. It has to be enacted by 60 countries.

There are lots of things people can do. There’s legislation. There’s are things you can do as consumers. If you’re going to eat fish, find fish that are not endangered or overfished. 

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