Drug smugglers are massacring dolphins

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 29, 2002 | by John Elvin

One of the stunts environmentalists use to get attention is launching their own boats to counter the activities of whalers. But a situation, has developed that may provide activists with the challenge of their lives. According to the London Sunday Telegraph, crime syndicates in Colombia and Mexico are buying tuna fleets and canneries in South America as covers for drug-smuggling operations. In the process, they kill dolphins.

The story quotes an animal-welfare advocate as saying that the smugglers use fishing techniques that have been outlawed by most countries because they endanger porpoises and dolphins. One of the techniques described involves dropping stun grenades on dolphins following schools of tuna. The smuggling effort is said to include hundreds of fishing boats; the death toll among dolphins is put in the millions.

The boats transport cocaine from country to country or retrieve shipments dropped by aircraft. In one recent incident, the Mexican navy, assisted by a U.S. Coast Guard detachment, boarded a trawler and found 10 tons of cocaine hidden under several tons of yellow-fin tuna.