Happy New Year! As you may have heard, the Chinese have confirmed 2007 as the Year of the Pig and Newsweek has coined it the Year of the Widget. But my personal favorite designation comes from the United Nations, which has declared 2007 the Year of the Dolphin.

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We’ve got our work cut out for us over at Oceana to do justice to this special year. In 2006, we stopped Congress from weakening the Marine Mammal Protection Act, thanks to a little help from our friends on the right. Some members of Congress tried to eliminate the “Dolphin Deadline,” a key provision of the Act that sets the timeline to reduce the death and injury of marine mammals by commercial fishing operations to insignificant levels. Hopefully, this year we’ll be able to do even more to protect the dolphins.

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