Save the dolphins!

The problem with fish
London, ON
June 2022
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Years ago, when the environment started to belatedly seep into mainstream consciousness, tuna became a bit of a flashpoint for the cause.

It was no longer just fish in a can. It had to be dolphin-safe, or otherwise certified by the powers-that-be that it had been caught and processed in a way that didn’t somehow harm Flipper and her friends.

We’ll leave the debate over whether this is actually a good thing for another day.

Wait, maybe we shouldn’t. Of COURSE it’s a good thing. Fishing, like so many other human activities, needs to become sustainable. Otherwise, we’re just doing to the oceans and its creatures what we’ve blindly - or maybe not so blindly - done to so many other ecosystems throughout human history.

Humanity has to raise its environmental game. And if it starts with tuna and dolphins, I’m in.

I do worry, however, about the potential for greenwashing, where we wrap ourselves in the packaging of goodness without really doing anything substantive behind it.

We may wear colorful ribbons. Or participate in awareness-raising fun runs on weekends. Or stick a frame on our social media profile. Or buy the clean-and-green version of something because the packaging makes us feel good.

At its most cynical, it can be little more than virtue-signalling. And since dolphin-safe - or the more politically correct “ocean-friendly” label it now wears - tuna led the charge, it’s what I’m zeroing in on today.

Because it’s not as if anyone wishes for ocean UNfriendly tuna.

But when all it is is a label on a box that may or may not be recycled, it’s a sign that we should be doing more than simply putting this product instead of that into our cart.

What that “what” is - what we must start doing beyond reading and sharing lovely marketing platitudes - is the question we mustn’t just answer. But model in our future behaviors.

Flipper would no doubt approve.

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