Topic Purposal for Hypertext #1 - "I Resign from eating Tuna"

I resign from eating tuna

I plan to do my essay on the dolphin-tuna controversy. This is an argument that has been going on for more than 30 years, and I feel would be a good topic to write about because of all the different opinions/standpoints to it.
Firstly there is the standpoint of the environmentalists, like Greenpeace, who are fighting to make all tuna fishing dolphin friendly. Their argument is that what fishermen are doing is inhuman. “Dolphins are killed because it is most profitable, at the moment, to find schools of dolphins surround them with nets and catch both dolphins and tuna” (Farrow). The fishermen have no use for the dolphins, thus they simple kill them, by chopping them up and throwing them back in the see or the fishermen throw them back into sea still tangled in the net, because it would take too much time to untangle them from the net. Sometimes the number of dolphins caught in a particular net is more than the number of tuna, due to the fact that most fisherman throw their nets down on an area that they see a school of dolphins, hoping that a school of tuna are swimming in the same area. Another brutal thing the fishermen do is that they actually hunt out dolphins when their tuna catch is low in order to eliminate their “competitor”, since dolphins eat tuna, thus the fisherman blame the dolphins for their low catch seasons.
A different standpoint is the standpoint of the fishermen. The fishermen have a hard and dangerous job, as the ocean is unforgiving and the weather is unpredictable at sea. They are risking their lives every time they leave land; therefore it is understandable that they would want the biggest return for that type of a risk. In their eyes, killing dolphins both saves them and increases the money they would earn because it would increase the amount of tuna they would catch.
In my hypertext essay, I will also take into account the standpoint of the consumers. How well informed are consumers on this issue? And once educated about the issue, does their pattern in buying tuna change?
I will additionally research on the standpoint of the tuna canning manufacturers, and what their stand is on the topic. I am aware that some tuna companies now place a “dolphin friendly” sticker on their cans, but how reliable is this sticker?
The last external standpoint I will take into account is the World Trade Organization’s. I will investigate the World Trade Organization’s standpoint in the debate. I know of a case of Mexico vs. the United States where the United States were refusing to purchase tuna from Mexico because they were not using dolphin friendly methods of catching the tuna. However Mexico brought its case to the WTO stating that the United States was in violation of its GATT obligation for imposing such a ban. Thus the United States had to lifts its ban although Mexico’s fishing activities result in incidental dolphin deaths.
I will end my essay by writing about my own view on this issue.