The State - News from April 13, 1988

The Reagan Administration allows the flagrant and illegal slaughter of 100,000 dolphins each year off the Pacific Coast by U.S. and foreign tuna fishermen, a suit filed in San Francisco federal court by two local environmental groups charged. The Earth Island Institute and Marine Mammal Fund accused the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service of failing to enforce the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. “This is the biggest slaughter of marine mammals in the world today,” said David Phillips, director of the institute. “This is an act of monumental human depravity and moral failure matched only by the apathy and inaction of government bureaucrats who were supposed to prevent this from ever happening.”