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Questions over beluga whale disturbance Marine Mammal Commission suggests tighter restrictions to protect Cook Inlet whale population from seismic sound, other impacts ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
The Marine Mammal Commission, a federal government agency charged with independent oversight of the operation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, has sent a letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service suggesting a tightening of proposals for the issue of incidental harassment authorizations in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. The IHAs in question, designed to protect mammal species such as the Cook Inlet beluga whales, particularly apply to offshore seismic and drilling operations in the inlet.
The Cook Inlet beluga whale population has been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 2008. And according to the Marine Mammal Commission there are at least 10 marine mammal species that are known to exist in Cook Inlet and that could be disturbed by industrial operations.
The fisheries service has been dealing with several IHA applications for Cook Inlet and had decided to conduct a programmatic environmental assessment that would evaluate and set out mitigation requirements for multiple offshore projects. The agency published a draft version of the environmental assessment on March 9. The Marine Mammal Commission letter, sent by Rebecca Lent, executive director of the commission, on March 28, the final day for public comments on the draft document, represented the commission’s response to that draft.
Scope of the assessment Part of the commission’s critique of the environmental assessment relates to the assessment’s scope. Apparently, while the fisheries service had originally anticipated considering all planned and on-going activities in Cook Inlet, the draft assessment only considers three projects: an ExxonMobil project associated with the Alaska LNG project, an offshore seismic survey planned by SAExploration and offshore drilling planned by BlueCrest Operating Alaska. The assessment makes no mention of an IHA issued for pile driving at the Port of Anchorage, the commission’s letter says. And other potential activities, including oil and gas construction, additional offshore drilling, coal mine related construction and further port projects could all impact marine mammals in the inlet, the commission’s letter says.
“The commission believes that the endangered species of Cook Inlet beluga whales warrants a complete accounting of all activities that may occur in 2016 and that could affect the stock,” the letter says.
The commission recommends that the fisheries service should contact a wide variety of entities that operate around Cook Inlet, to ensure that all significant noise generating activities are considered in the environmental assessment.
The commission also questions a proposal in the environmental assessment to issue the three IHAs that have been requested, using existing, specified mitigation measures for limiting the disturbance to marine mammals. It appears that the required mitigation measures are not consistent across the IHAs and, furthermore, there may be merit in adding some further mitigation measures that would provide further protections to the animals, the letter says.
Combined impacts The commission’s letter also takes issue with the manner in which the IHAs are considered individually, without taking into account the combined impacts on the wildlife of projects which can take place within the same time span.
“As the number of entities conducting activities in Cook Inlet increases, the total number of authorized beluga whale takes also increases under that approach,” the letter says. “Further, if two or more activities that alone would take only small numbers of marine mammals and have only negligible impacts are being conducted in close proximity to one another or at the same time, there is a much greater risk that the MMPA (Marine Mammal Protection Act) limits will be exceeded.”
A “take” is a regulatory term referring to the disturbance of an animal.
A programmatic approach to managing incidental takes of marine mammals would involve implementing a cap on the total annual takes, an approach that would stand a greater chance of ensuring that the total take does not impede the recovery of the beluga whale population, the commission’s letter says.
The letter also urges the fisheries service to make sure that it considers all of the marine mammal species that may be found in Cook Inlet when preparing the final environmental assessment for the IHAs.
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