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October 2008

Vol. 13, No. 40 Week of October 05, 2008

Beluga whales hold steady in Cook Inlet

Federal scientists are considering whether to list the group of marine mammals as endangered under the Endangered Species Act

The Associated Press

The number of beluga whales estimated to inhabit Cook Inlet, offshore from Alaska’s largest city, has not increased in the past year, leading critics to reiterate their call for greater protections over the objections of Gov. Sarah Palin.

The new estimate will be considered when regulators decide whether the white whales should be listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act - a move first opposed by Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, last year. She cited concerns that the listing would harm the local economy.

Federal scientists have said the Cook Inlet whales have a 26 percent chance of going extinct in the next 100 years. A decision is required by Oct. 20.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in June estimated that 375 beluga whales inhabit waters near Anchorage, the same number counted in 2007, according to the agency’s annual survey. There were 302 belugas counted in 2006, up from an all-time low of 278 in 2005.

At one time, there were perhaps as many as 1,300 Cook Inlet belugas. The decline is believed to have resulted from over-harvesting by Alaska Native subsistence hunters before the hunt was sharply curtailed nearly a decade ago.

Between 1999 and 2007, subsistence hunters harvested just five whales. No whales were harvested in the last two years.

Scientists at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service conducted the survey in early June when the whales gather to feed on fish near the mouths of rivers that empty into upper Cook Inlet.

Scientists for seven days flew over the upper inlet to manually count the whales. Photographs and videos also were taken of whale groups to help refine the population estimate.

Once the survey observations were analyzed, the population estimate was the same as in 2007, government scientists said Sept. 26.

“Probably something more needs to be done for this species to recover; the question is what,” said Rod Hobbs, an operation research analyst at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

Cook Inlet’s beluga population was declared depleted in 2000 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Last year, NOAA said it supported listing the whales as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. An April deadline was set for making a decision. The state of Alaska asked for a six-month extension.

If the whales were listed, Cook Inlet has a variety of activities including oil and gas leasing and seismic studies that would receive greater scrutiny, said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director with the Center for Biological Diversity, a group pushing for the listing.

“What this shows is that the population is not increasing,” Cummings said. “This species should have been protected years ago.”

Palin has said she prefers that the National Marine Fisheries Service work with the state and other scientists to finalize and implement a conservation plan.

Palin spokesman Bill McAllister said Sept. 25 that Palin’s position remains unchanged.

The Cook Inlet belugas are considered genetically distinct. They are one of five groups of beluga whales in U.S. waters. The others are in Bristol Bay, the eastern Bering Sea, the eastern Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea.





What do the CI Beluga population figures mean?

The 2008 National Marine Fisheries Service Cook Inlet beluga whale survey has resulted in an estimated population size of 375, an identical figure to the population estimate obtained from the 2007 survey.

But what do these figures actually mean and what do they tell us about the population trend of the belugas?

The fact that an identical method of counting and estimating has been used in each survey from one year to the next leads to an expectation that the survey results show the population trend over a multiyear period.

And that trend shows a continuing population decline, according to Rod Hobbs, leader of the beluga project at the national marine mammal laboratory of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

Though the population estimates of 375 for 2007 and 2008 were notably larger than those for the two previous years, the low numbers in those earlier years could be accounted for by data errors, Hobbs told Petroleum News Sept. 29.

An examination of the overall trend in the data over multiple years reveals the continuing decline, he 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, Hobbs added.

Disagreement

Jason Brune, executive director of the Resource Development Council, told Petroleum News Oct. 1 that he vehemently disagrees with the conclusion that the data indicate a continuing population decline.

First, 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, assuming the population estimates are fairly accurate, the past couple of years have shown a population uptick, 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.”

The only known reason for the population decline that the data indicate in the 1990s was a subsistence harvest of more than 300 whales in that period, Brune said. Following the regulation of the subsistence hunt after 1998, the population seems to have stabilized and is now starting to recover, he said.

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.

Hobbs has told Petroleum News previously that the NMFS population model used to project future Cook Inlet whale populations includes the known characteristics of the beluga whale life cycle and factors in uncertainties in the population census.

- Alan Bailey

Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistrubuted.

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