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October 2008

Vol. 13, No. 43 Week of October 26, 2008

CI belugas on the endangered list

NOAA: Beluga whale population in the Cook Inlet has continued to decline, despite the regulation of subsistence hunting

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

It’s been 18 months since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stirred an intense debate in Southcentral Alaska by announcing its proposal to list the Cook Inlet beluga whales as an endangered species. And on Oct. 17 NOAA issued its final ruling, confirming that it is listing the whales under the Endangered Species Act.

The agency says that despite restrictions starting in 1999 on the subsistence hunting of the whales, the beluga population is not recovering from an estimated population decline of 50 percent between 1994 and 1998.

“In spite of precautions already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” said James Balsiger, acting assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

Five populations

The Cook Inlet beluga population is one of five distinct populations recognized in U.S. waters, with the other populations being found in Bristol Bay, the eastern Bering Sea, the eastern Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. The whale population in Cook Inlet forms what NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service terms a “distinct population segment,” in effect a sub-species that is distinct and isolated from beluga populations elsewhere.

And NOAA says that several factors may be hindering population recovery in the Cook Inlet, including whale strandings; the cumulative impacts of developments in and around the Inlet; oil and gas exploration and development; accidental pollutant spills from industrial activities; AND disease and predation by killer whales.

Under the terms of the Endangered Species Act, NMFS will develop a recovery plan for the whales and within a year the agency must define what constitutes the critical habitat for the animals.

“Listing the Cook Inlet beluga whales means any federal agency that funds, authorizes or carries out new projects or activities that may affect the whales in the area must first consult with NOAA’s Fisheries Service to determine the potential effects on the whales,” NOAA said. “A federal action must not jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species.”

Federal agencies will be prohibited from authorizing, funding or carrying out actions that would damage or destroy the critical habitat.

And since many projects that industry or local governments carry out around Cook Inlet require some form of federal permit, the listing decision could impact a broad range of activities, including oil industry operations, planned development at the Port of Anchorage and wastewater treatment at Anchorage.

Varied reactions

Several environmental organizations have strongly endorsed the NOAA action in listing the belugas.

“The science is clear — and it has been for a very long time,” said marine mammal scientist Craig Matkin of the North Gulf Oceanic Society in a press release from advocacy organization Cook Inletkeeper. “The population is critically endangered. The protections of the ESA provide the safety net so that the population can escape extinction and recover. Under the listing a comprehensive, habitat focused, research plan can finally be initiated.”

But others have criticized the listing, saying that the NOAA findings on the population decline are unjustified and that an unwarranted listing will have a negative impact on the Cook Inlet economy. The annual NOAA surveys show an uptick in the estimated population since 2005, with the population count remaining constant in 2007 and 2008.

“I am deeply disappointed with NOAA’s decision to list the Cook Inlet beluga as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The population is at low levels but it has increased 35 percent since 2005 and was stable in this year’s count,” said U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “ … There are still too many significant scientific questions that remain and I believe it is difficult to justify a listing on a species where we have such a scarcity of data.”

“Cook Inlet’s beluga whales are deeply cherished by Alaskans and visitors alike, so we are committed to actions that will allow them to thrive in our waters,” said Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. “But at a time when the beluga population is stable, this decision by the federal government is unnecessary and could negatively affect Alaskan families.”

Subsistence hunting

At the core of the debate is the question of whether the beluga population decline resulted primarily from subsistence hunting prior to 1999.

“We would have preferred that NOAA delay this endangered listing decision for a few years to get more population counts, and determine whether the cutback in hunting is working to help the beluga population recover,” said Denby Lloyd, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “Our analysis of NOAA’s data indicates that the population has been growing steadily in the last few years, just as studies had predicted.”

And the Resource Development Council has criticized NOAA for what the council says is a failure to implement a draft Cook Inlet beluga whale conservation plan that resulted from the categorization of the whales as “depleted” under the Marine Mammals Protection Act in 2000. Jason Brune, executive director of RDC, has told Petroleum News that RDC supported the “depleted” categorization.

NMFS has said in the past that the conservation plan was unfunded and, as a consequence, might not be activated. However, on Oct. 22 the agency released a final version of the plan (see sidebar).

So what are the known facts about the Cook Inlet whale population?

Although a 1979 survey resulted in a population estimate of 1,293 belugas, systematic counting of the whales did not begin until 1994; since then NMFS has conducted annual aerial surveys. The aerial surveys estimated a decline in population from 653 whales in 1994 to 347 whales in 1998. That decline proved particularly severe in the 1990s, as a result, most people seem to agree, of unsustainably high levels of subsistence harvesting of the whales.

The NMFS population estimates reached a low of 278 in 2005 and then rebounded a little, with the 2007 and 2008 surveys estimating the population count as constant at 375.

In a separate project sponsored by Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and LGL Alaska Research Associates, LGL scientists are using marks on the beluga whale skin to identify belugas in the upper Cook Inlet and to monitor the movements of those whales. As of January 2008 the research team had obtained complete identification profiles on 188 whales over a multi-year period at specific sites where whales can be found. But to date there is no way of extrapolating that whale count to an estimate of the total whale population in the upper Cook Inlet region.

Snapshot count

When doing its annual surveys, NMFS attempts to obtain a “snapshot” count of the entire beluga population by flying around the upper Cook Inlet, Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm looking for whales.

Rod Hobbs, leader of the beluga project at the national marine mammal laboratory of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, told Petroleum News in April 2007 that the researchers conduct surveys on summer days when conditions enable observations around the entire survey area. Surveys take place at low tide, when the area of water that needs to be traversed is at a minimum.

When a beluga pod is spotted the survey aircraft makes eight to 16 passes parallel to the direction of movement of the whales, shooting video of the animals. One video camera films the entire pod, while a second video camera zooms in on details within the pod. The video images provide a recorded means of counting the whales, while observers on the aircraft also conduct counts during the flights.

When analyzing the video images, the researchers match up the whales that appear in both the close-up and broader images. They then count the whales that are only visible in the close-up image and extrapolate that count to make an estimate of the total number of belugas in the complete pod. The estimates of whale numbers also factor in the likelihood that some whales have dived under the water.

Juvenile whales

Brune and others have questioned whether the NMFS observers are able to see all of the juvenile whales in the pods, because the grey color of the young whales blends with the color of the water. However, Hobbs said that it is possible to see the juveniles in the close-up video that is shot during the surveys. Factors such as the skin surface texture of the animals and variations in the water color also enable observers to see young whales, he said.

And in response to questions regarding the possibility that some members of the beluga population may have migrated outside the survey area at the time that a survey is done, Hobbs said that NMFS researchers had reviewed hundreds of hours of surveys from the Gulf of Alaska without finding any evidence for significant numbers of Cook Inlet belugas being located outside the Cook Inlet area.

NMFS extrapolates future Cook Inlet whale populations by plugging the survey numbers into a population model that includes the known characteristics of the beluga whale life cycle and factors in the uncertainties in the population census. The model is run using the first age of reproduction set one-third at five years, one-third at six years and one-third at seven years, Hobbs said.

In 2007 the model found a 65 percent probability that the population would continue to decline — increasing the initial age of reproduction does not result in a major degradation in that statistic.

“If you change that to 10 years it doesn’t make much difference,” Hobbs said.

The model also predicted a 26 percent probability of extinction of the Cook Inlet belugas within 100 years. That 26 percent probability greatly exceeds the NMFS criterion of a 1 percent probability that triggers an endangered species classification.

But what about the apparent population uptick after 2005?

In September 2008 Hobbs told Petroleum News that NMFS had not changed its views regarding the population decline and that the low population count in 2005 could simply be an artifact of data errors. An examination of the overall trend in the data over multiple years reveals the continuing decline, Hobbs said.

The two most recent data points lie above the multi-year trend line, which also suggests that the rate of decline may be slowing, he added.

Alternative view

Brune vehemently disagrees with the NMFS conclusions.

The margins of error in the estimates all overlap, rendering the differences between the estimates across the period since the 1990s statistically insignificant, Brune said. Moreover, even assuming the population estimates are fairly accurate, the past couple of years have shown a population increase, he said.

“In fact, if you look, since 2005 we’ve seen a 35 percent growth in the total population,” Brune said. “… We haven’t seen a decline.”

Citing a 2001 paper by beluga specialist L.K. Litzky, Brune said that following the loss of many of the adult whales as a result of hunting in the 1990s, it would take five to seven years for the beluga population to start to recover after subsistence hunting regulations took effect. That’s consistent with the recovery in the population observed since 2006, he said.

The only known reason for the population decline in the 1990s that the data indicate was a subsistence harvest of more than 300 whales in that period, Brune said. Information presented in the final Cook Inlet beluga whale conservation plan indicates that tissue sample analysis has not indicated any significant impact of pollution on the whales — the plan says that the impact of the oil industry on the whales is unknown.





NMFS issues conservation plan for the Cook Inlet beluga whales

On Oct. 22, five days after it announced the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whales, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced publication of the final version of its conservation plan for the whales. NMFS originally developed the plan in response to the categorization of the whales as “depleted” under the terms of the Marine Mammals Protection Act. The plan overviews the ecology of the whales, assesses potential threats to the whale population and outlines a series of actions to address those threats.

The agency published a draft version of the plan in 2005. In the final version of the document the agency has restructured the draft plan to reflect comments received from the public, Brad Smith of the NMFS Protected Resources Division in Anchorage told Petroleum News Oct. 22.

Under the terms of the Endangered Species Act NMFS will have to develop a recovery plan for the whales. The conservation plan bears some similarity to a recovery plan but addresses whale conservation rather than population recovery. To develop a recovery plan NMFS anticipates forming a recovery team that includes all stakeholders in the Cook Inlet beluga whale situation, Smith said.

The conservation plan sets out natural and human-induced factors that could pose threats to the whales. Natural factors consist of stranding; predation; parasites and disease; and environmental change. Human-induced factors consist of subsistence harvesting; poaching and illegal harassment; personal use, subsistence and fishing; pollution; the oil and gas industry; development activities around the Cook Inlet; vessel traffic; tourism and whale watching; noise; and whale research activities.

NMFS thinks that, out of these possible threats, the potential impacts of strandings; disease; poaching; prey reduction through fishing; and noise are high. The impacts of environmental change; pollution; the oil and gas industry; and development activities are unknown, NMFS says.

The proposed action plan to address the potential threats includes 20 actions under the general headings of assessing changes to the whale population size; improving knowledge of which factors are limiting population recovery; and refining knowledge of habitat requirements and the whale distribution. NMFS estimates the total cost of carrying out the actions to be about $8.5 million over a five-year period from 2009 to 2013.

The Federal Register notice regarding the conservation plan says that NMFS has not identified funding sources for the plan actions and that the plan “will be used (adaptively) to set regional management and research priorities.”

—Alan Bailey


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