Greenpeace Foundation planned and mounted the first seaborne campaign against the killing of dolphins by the tuna industry in the Eastern Tropical pacific (ETP).

It was 1982 and Greenpeace International’s (GPINTL) offices had been raising money on the “dolphin” issue for years, without having done much of anything to save them. Don White, named the International Director of Dolphin Campaigns for GPINTL, convinced GPINTL management to conduct a joint campaign with Greenpeace Foundation in the waters of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) by bringing the ship Rainbow Warrior through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific for the first time. (There she would remain until destroyed by French commandos in New Zealand in 1985).

Public and regional awareness of dolphin kills was at a historic low in 1982, despite the fact that huge numbers of dolphins continued to die in purse-seine tuna nets. To highlight this issue, the joint Greenpeace Foundation/GPINTL crew of the RW would conduct a 3-pronged approach designed by Greenpeace Foundation: (1) attempt to locate tuna seiners actively engaged in dolphin sets and engage them by putting human volunteers inside the nets with the dolphins. This was the holy grail of the campaign, but recognized to be difficult since the RW would only sustain 12 knots and the tuna seiners had a good 6 knot speed advantage. Moreover, the special “spotting ultralight” aircraft bought and assembled by Greenpeace Foundation for the campaign proved unable to take to the air at sea. (2) Deploy “aggregation devices” to attract schools of tuna and highlight the fact that it was possible to set on tuna without setting on dolphins. These floating aggregation devices, designed by Greenpeace Foundation, would be deployed throughout the ETP as possible. (3) Conduct public relations and media events in the ports of central american tuna-fishing nations.

The campaign was a qualified success. It did not encounter any actively setting tunaboats (although this was arguably affected by the diversion of the crew to Peru (see Peru Whaling Campaign). It succeeded in deploying aggregation devices, and in fact tunaboats subsequently took loads of tuna aggregated from beneath several of the devices! (They featured a floating information sign with instructions to report successful sets to the IATTC). Extremely successful publicity was obtained for the dolphins in Costa Rica and other ports of call, with harbor demonstrations of inflatable dolphins, and press conferences featuring footage of dolphins being killed by tuna nets. And of course, this was the world’s first sea-borne campaign to attempt blocking the world’s largest kill of cetaceans.

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