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City leaders want for more marine research, less federal control Sterner measures to protect Cook Inlet beluga whales could thwart efforts to build a natural gas pipeline to the Kenai Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted from the December issue of Business • News Alaska. Dawnell Smith PNA Contributing Writer
Alaska communities face multi-million dollar costs if the National Marine Fisheries Service adopts sterner measures to protect Cook Inlet beluga whales and the western population of stellar sea lions, say city, borough and Native leaders.
“Whatever we do, let’s let science drive this bus,” Kodiak Island Mayor Gary Stevens told the Resource Development Council’s 20th annual conference Nov. 19.
Like others, he said more conclusive facts are needed before actions are taken that could hamper development and destroy the economic vitality of many communities. Speakers said the costs of heightened protection could:
• Cost up to $500 million for a secondary wastewater treatment facility in Anchorage.
• Devastate Unalaska, the nation’s
No. 1 commercial fishing port, which processed more than 500 million pounds of fish valued at $110 million in 1998.
• Thwart efforts to build a natural gas pipeline to the Kenai Peninsula.
The NMFS classified the stellar sea lion as endangered in 1998, claiming a dramatic drop in numbers over two decades, and is reviewing 1999 population studies to decide whether to list beluga whales as threatened or endangered. Whatever decision is made on whales this spring, activity in Cook Inlet will come under some measure of federal oversight.
“For the foreseeable future, growth and development in the waters and throughout the watersheds of Cook Inlet, commercial fishing, subsistence hunting and the welfare the beluga whale will be intertwined,” said Penny Dalton, assistant administrator of the NMFS.
Communities fear the cost Anchorage Assembly Chairman George Wuerch said the cost of increased protection could be staggering, pointing to Anchorage’s wastewater facility as a hot spot.
“There’s no substantial evidence that the impacts of this plant have had any detrimental affects on belugas or fisheries,” he said. However, if others came to a different conclusion, the city could be faced with building a $500 million secondary plant.
Wuerch said concerns over whale habitat have already led to a direct loss of state revenue with the cancellation of lease sales for 70 Cook Inlet tracts.
Kenai Mayor John Williams, worried about efforts to build the gas pipeline, urged the NMFS to gather more facts before taking action. “Look for all the answers,” he said. “Some of them may be mere items of where the (beluga’s) groceries are, rather than who’s killing them off.”
Federal biologists attribute a 50 percent drop in the beluga whale population between 1994 and 1998 to hunting, but Dan Alex, project coordinator for the Cook Inlet Marine Mammal Council, challenged the findings, including the assumption that the whales live exclusively in Cook Inlet.
“I for one don’t believe that for a minute,” he said. “I think the belugas come into the inlet in the spring time following the hooligan — they follow the fish.”
Only more rigorous science can determine whether these whales are unique and isolated, he said. “If the decline is a result of harvesting, we can regulate and manage that.” Alex said the CIMMC supported a ban on subsistence harvesting of belugas until Oct. 1, 2000, but also wanted to preserve the right of Native subsistence hunters to eat beluga whales.
Pollock fisheries endure closures NMFS biologists cited nutritional stress as the most likely culprit for falling stellar sea lion numbers, resulting in closures and restrictions for pollock fisheries in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands.
“The pollock fisheries compete with stellar sea lions by removing their food from important foraging areas,” Dalton explained. The goal, she added, is to protect the sea lions without unnecessarily restricting fishing.
Communities demand research Last year, NMFS worked with the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council to establish emergency measures that curtailed or closed fishing in critical habitat and broke the season into four periods, but the future looks uncertain.
“The truth of the matter is that we just don’t know what will happen until the fishery begins this season,” said Stevens, who demanded practical, justifiable and provable facts before restricting fisheries any further.
If fishing practices don’t contribute to the decline, he said, “we would be exceedingly foolish to disrupt this industry and the workers, to devastate the economy of our communities and to destroy the lives and fortunes and careers of so many hard-working Americans.”
Unalaska Mayor Frank Kelty said the fishing industry is the sole economic base for his community and the pollock fishery is the most important component of that base. He endorsed more taxpayer-funded research since so little was known about stellar sea lions. “We believe well-funded, long-term research is the key to understanding the decline.”
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