Go Green Tips- Fishy Business

By: Christine Toorinjian

               Hello and welcome to this month’s go green tip! Warning: This month’s tip is a little out of the blue, so don’t get confused if you realize that you are starting to read about super markets and dolphins. Remember, this blog is based on not only things our school has to offer to you to stay green, but many non-related tips to help you become part of the solution to many global problems. With that being said, let’s move on shall we?

This month’s tip: “Tune in to Tuna”. Okay, so by now, I know what you’re thinking. What the heck does that mean? Well, here’s the break down. This tip is more pushing towards animals, not really the planet in particular, but hey, this month’s tip is this month’s tip. Moving on here’s the problem. You know how you’re in the super market (or a store that sells food), and you’re like, hey, I feel like buying some cans of tuna. It may seem like you know what you’re doing, and your just buying some fish that you may, or may not eat later, right? Wrong. For 50 years now, it has been estimated that around 7 million dolphins have drowned due to being entangled in fishermen’s nets. How you may ask? Well the answers simple. First off, tuna like to swim beneath, where I like to say “the dolphins play”- hey that rhymes! Anyways, because of the fact that dolphins are easier to see than the tuna beneath them, they’re often mistaken to be the tuna FISH. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, how can you get confused with a cute, energetic marine MAMMAL (underline mammal, twice), that goes “Eeh-eeh-eeh”, with a scaly, gilled, blank staring, and usually multi-colored FISH- not to call out fish or anything. Well, that’s what this month’s tip is for, so let’s get to the actual tip.

Fast fact: Tuna have some of the highest mercury levels within them, which is given off by pollution in the ocean. So, on a totally unrelated  note, don’t litter the ocean with any harmful chemicals or just plain out litter!

Now that you know the story behind the tip, it’s time for you to actually know what it is! Here it goes. Check the label of the tuna cans you buy, it may just save a dolphins life. What I mean by this is, that ever since the “dolphin-in-the-net” problem came up, the people who truly, really care have decided to speak for the dolphins, who apparently haven’t developed means of communication between us. It’s time that you know the ugly truth. Dolphins sometimes dive (see what I did there?), their way into our tuna cans, but there is no need to worry. The people that I have mentioned before, who speak for the dolphins, the loraxes of the sea, have come up with a simple solution. By looking at the label of a can, closely, you will find an area where it says “Dolphin-safe”. This means that no dolphins were harmed in the making of the tuna. If you don’t see this, then I suggest that you put that can back on the shelf where it belongs, for the dolphin’s sake.

Benefiting not only you from not eating cute, innocent marine mammals, this tip also helps out the dolphins roaming around the big blue. I mean, who wants their remains going through the human digestive tract, taking a one way ticket to the porcelain express, in a quite unmentionable form, if you know what I mean, and then going into the great beyond, having  to experience that first? I don’t. Give dolphins the satisfactory of at least not getting eaten as their last “earthly form’s” moments. So check the can and make sure it’s dolphin free! Don’t be mean and eat dolphin spleen, be the loraxes of the sea and eat dolphin free!

               This blog is based on the book “You Can Save the Planet: 50 Ways You Can Make a Difference”, written by Jacquie Wines.