UN body rejects trade ban on Black Sea dolphins

November 11, 2002 - Courtesy REUTERS

SANTIAGO, Chile.

A proposed ban on the trade of Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, which are sought after by the aquarium industry worldwide, was rejected at a U.N. meeting on endangered species, organizers said.

Georgia, one of six countries with a Black Sea coastline, had asked the 160-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to outlaw all trade in the bottlenose to prevent it from being wiped out.

The proposal, one of the first to be considered at the meeting that runs to Nov. 15, failed to win a two-thirds majority vote needed for approval due to different interpretations of the limited scientific data available on the species.

Bottlenose dolphins, also found in other water bodies, are in demand from amusement parks and circuses because of their playful acrobatics and receptivity to training. Trade in the Black Sea specimen has been curtailed under CITES since 1979.

But conservationists argue those restrictions are not enough, saying increased trade in live dolphins from the Black Sea since 1990 threatens their survival. That risk is aggravated by the dolphins' slow reproductive cycle and polluted habitat, they say.
"The situation in the Black Sea is really quite a desperate one. A degraded population is now being strongly affected by a highly degraded environment," Mike Simmonds, Director of Science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), said before the vote.

Russia, the world's top exporter of the dolphins, led opposition to a ban, saying its studies show the population is thriving and unharmed by pollution and trade.

GENETICALLY DISTINCT

Environmentalists say research shows bottlenose dolphins in the Black Sea are genetically distinct from those found in the Mediterranean Sea and North Atlantic and therefore merit special protection but Russia and others question those findings.
There is also disagreement on the size of the population, which Russia believes is stable.

"Russian scientists did a survey of fishermen and sailors on the Black Sea. The result is that 70 percent of Russian people are saying the population is increasing," Valentine Iluashenko, a Russian delegate to CITES, told Reuters in remarks
translated into English.

The Black Sea dolphins, which form small social units and breed at about the same rate as humans, were depleted from heavy hunting from the late 19th Century until the 1980s, first for meat and later for their oil, Simmons said. Now, chemical contaminants dumped into the enclosed sea are also killing the marine mammals.
About 120 live Black Sea bottlenose dolphins were traded internationally - at about $20,000 each and sometimes via Internet - between 1990 and 2001, conservationists say.