Save Flipper!

northamerica.oceana.org: Dolphin Deadline click here & sign the petition to save Flipper!

Congress -- led by Congressmen Wayne Gilchrest and Richard Pombo – may soon be trying to remove a deadline that would reduce the catching, injuring and killing of dolphins, whales and other marine mammals. Take action today -- tell Congress not to kill the Dolphin Deadline. If you live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland -- click here. Anywhere else in the US, click here.

Each year commercial fishing operations catch and kill more than 300,000 marine mammals worldwide – more than 800 each day. The United States contributes significantly to this problem, needlessly killing thousands of dolphins, whales and other animals each year. According to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, this “dirty-fishing” is one of the biggest threats to the future of marine mammal populations.

In the United States, laws already exist to protect marine mammals. More than 30 years ago, the U.S. Congress enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act to stop the decline of dolphins, whales, manatees, walruses, polar bears and other ocean animals.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires the federal government to reduce the killing and injury of marine mammals in commercial fisheries to negligible levels. Ten years ago, Congress set April 2001 as the deadline to achieve this goal, but the deadline has since passed.

Now, instead of working harder to enforce the deadline, some members of Congress just want to do away with it altogether. (View Fact Sheet)What they should do is insist that the government comply with the law. If this deadline is removed, marine mammals will lose the most basic and fundamental protection given to them, and the number killed or harmed by commercial fishing operations could increase by the thousands.