Dolphin-safe tuna certification emerged from campaigns against cetacean bycatch in purse seine fisheries; understanding what these labels mean and their current welfare implications is important for informed purchasing.
Dolphin-safe tuna labelling represents an important conservation and welfare success story for dolphins specifically, but its broader welfare implications are more complex. The shift from dolphin-encirclement methods to FAD-based fishing reduced dolphin bycatch enormously but increased bycatch of other sentient species including sharks, rays, sea turtles, and juvenile billfish. From a welfare perspective, this represents a displacement rather than elimination of bycatch harm. Pole and line fishing, which targets individual tuna and has very low bycatch rates, provides the most welfare-positive tuna fishing method across all species. Consumer preference for pole and line certified tuna provides the strongest welfare signal to the fishing industry.