There's a storm brewing out there.
Not a storm of winds and crashing seas,
it's a storm of public opinion whipped up
by conflicting interests and misinformation.
In the center of the storm, marine mammals--
whales, seals, sea lions, porpoises.
Millions of these warm-blooded air breathers
inhabit oceans from the Arctic to the Antarctic
and live off the abundance of the sea.
There used to be a lot more.
But over the last several centuries,
whaling and sealing industries took a heavy toll.
Congress responded to public concern for their plight
and, in 1972, passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
And the tempest has been building ever since.
To fishermen, marine mammals are voracious competitors.
They eat billions of pounds of seafoods each year.
Fishermen say marine mammal numbers
should be strictly controlled so that humans can harvest more
from the sea.
Protectionists say, hands off.
We should not interfere with the natural checks and balances.
Some biologists and environmentalists
believe that we are a part of nature.
We cannot do without the resources of the ocean.
Wise use of fish and marine mammals
would be in the best interest of society, they say.
In the next half hour we'll explore the storm of issues
as it builds along this the Pacific coast.
Air-breathing, warm-blooded sea mammals
live in all of the world's oceans.
Although most are in the Southern Hemisphere,
millions inhabit our northern coasts too.
In adapting to life at sea they have
evolved in a variety of ways.
Sea lions, for instance, developed webbed feet, hence
their classification as pinnipeds,
one of three major types of sea mammals.
We know that the sea lions, the seals, and other pinnipeds
are numerous.
However, it is very difficult to count them all
because they spend most of their lives
at sea, often in remote corners of the world.
Experts believe there maybe 30 million pinnipeds
in the world today.
In the past, pinnipeds, such as the elephant seal,
were looked upon as sources of oil
and hide to be harvested for profit.
50,000 of these ponderous giants once
hauled out on a few isolated Mexican and American islands
to rear their young.
When their sanctuaries were discovered,
it took only a few decades to decimate the population.
By 1890, only 100 remained.
After Mexico closed these islands to sealers,
elephant seals recovered dramatically
and are even expanding their range northward.
Porpoises, nomads of the sea, converge on a boat
from out of nowhere to ride the bow wave.
These small whales, another major group of marine mammals,
spend their entire lives at sea.
We know very little about them.
While there are still millions of porpoises,
individual populations may be in trouble.
Large whales, the third group of marine mammals,
have been hunted commercially for centuries.
The early hunters were handicapped by crude weapons
and fragile ships.
With sail power boats and hand-thrown harpoons,
it was sometimes as perilous to be the hunter as the hunted.
As technology improved, the harvest grew.
Steam power replaced sail.
Explosives replaced the hand-thrown harpoon.
Preservatives and on-board freezing
extended the range of the whaling fleets.
The tide turned against the slow-swimming whales.
And their populations dwindled.
From an estimated 4 million whales
before the killing began, there are probably only 2 million
left today.
For many marine mammals, world opinion and public concern
for their welfare have been pivotal in their struggle
to survive.
Two days out of San Diego, the luxury
cruiser Searcher motors southward.
Her passengers are on vacation, following
the route of migrating gray whales toward Baja, Mexico.
They've come to San Ignacio Lagoon.
Each spring, whalers gathered in the shallow Mexican lagoons
where the gray whales come to bear their young.
Confined here, the animals were slaughtered by the thousands
until, at the turn of the century,
the once-abundant gray whale was nearly extinct.
Today the gray whale is protected
by international agreement and has
recovered to near pre-exploitation levels,
somewhere around 17,000 of them in the eastern Pacific.
By the late 1960s and early '70s,
public concern in the United States for marine mammals
was high.
Oceanarium stars like Shamu and Flipper
introduced millions of people to the world of marine mammals.
Public attitudes were, in large part,
formed in places such as this.
Public sympathy and concern led to the passage
in 1972 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The Act says we will no longer allow these animals to be
overexploited and we'll restore those groups of animals that
have been seriously depleted.
The Act declares a moratorium on the killing of marine mammals.
But there are exceptions.
Some Native Americans are permitted subsistence hunting
Commercial fishermen can get a permit to protect their gear
and catch.
A limited number of animals can be taken for public display
or for research.
Before the Act, hundreds of thousands of porpoises
drowned in tuna nets every year.
To comply with the Act, tuna fishermen redesigned their nets
and changed their seining procedures
to allow porpoises to escape.
The results were dramatic.
Porpoise deaths dropped by more than 90%.
Still, there are problems.
Some porpoise populations apparently were critically low
when the Act was passed.
Despite eight years of partial protection,
they have not recovered.
And here on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest,
there are more problems.
Gillnet fishermen are frustrated because the Marine Mammal
Protection Act prevents them from driving seals out
of the river.
They complain that mammals have become numerous
and are eating too many salmon.
Seals and sea lions have always lived in the lower Columbia.
They do eat salmon.
But no one knows how many.
They also eat other things including lamprey eels.
Lamprey also kill salmon.
So it's not altogether clear whether marine mammals
on the balance are damaging salmon populations
or helping them.
When white settlers came to the Columbia,
they discovered an enormous salmon resource.
They shipped the bounty worldwide.
But recently, salmon fishing in the Columbia
has fallen on hard times.
There are many reasons for the dramatic decline.
Giant dams now block migrating salmon returning
to their spawning streams.
Despite elaborate fish ladders, many never make it.
Millions of young salmon are killed
trying to pass through the dams on their way to sea.
Water quality has suffered too.
Eroded topsoil from farm fields, construction sites,
and logged watersheds has buried once-productive spawning beds.
Our demands for water have reduced the river's flow
significantly.
And we have at times overfished this great river.
Bill Puustinen has been fishing on the Columbia
since third grade--
64 years.
It's a hard life.
When the season is open, he fishes day and night.
Bill has seen the good years and the bad.
Recently, he complains, they've all been bad.
Bill thinks that seals have contributed
to his lack of success.
Since the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed,
Bill has had a few close encounters
with seals and sea lions.
I laid the net out in a prairie drift above Tongue Point
because I thought I was getting away from the seals
over in the beacon channel.
There were just hundreds of them over there.
So I didn't want to lay net out there.
So I laid in the prairie.
I expected to be at least picking up
a net without any seals fouled in it or anything else.
But lo and behold, when I went to haul it in,
I had not only a seal but a big sea lion in the net.
Bill cares deeply for all natural life
on the Columbia River.
He risked his own life in an effort to free the sea lion.
Finally, the sea lion came up again
and went up over that bite of the web
and threw the whole doggone thing around my hand
so that I was wrapped in a web and I couldn't get loose.
And it was either me hang onto that steel rail above the cabin
or then go overboard with the sea lion and the net
and down into the eddy where I'd certainly been drowned.
There there's no two ways about it.
Worldwide, thousands of marine mammals
are entangled and drowned in nets each year.
Many others are attracted by discarded fishing gear.
They usually survive, at least for a while,
but must carry around the ornaments of their curiosity.
Some seals learn to work their way down the length
of a net, grazing on salmon.
They often take just one bite from the choicest portion,
leaving an unmarketable carcass to the frustrated fishermen.
Net robbing is frequent and troublesome.
And it represents only a small part
of the total diet of marine mammals.
Let's now shift our attention from the Columbia
northward to the Bering Sea, where
there are millions of marine mammals in the middle of one
of the richest fisheries in the world.
4 billion pounds of fish and shellfish
are caught in the Bering Sea each year.
No expense is spared in the frantic rush
to get the valuable catch to processing plants.
Americans, Russians, Japanese-- they
all come for the capelin, pollock, crabs, sablefish,
and salmon.
In Bristol Bay alone, in two weeks in 1979,
American fisherman caught 17 million sockeye salmon
with a dockside value of $100 million.
The benefits of the fishing industry to society
do not stop at the dock.
The impact on the world's economy and employment
is substantial.
But humans aren't the only consumers of these rich fishery
resources.
For fishermen, the Bering Sea is a commercial gold mine.
But for millions of marine mammals, it is life itself.
200 miles out in the middle of the Bering Sea
a lonely set of islands, the Pribilofs, host 1
and 1/2 million fur seals.
It's the largest concentration of marine mammals
in the Northern Hemisphere.
Fur seals spend 7 months at sea and migrate up to 5,000 miles
through these chilly waters.
Bulls arrive on the islands in mid-May, just a few at first.
They come to stake out territories
and to await the arrival of the females.
By late June, hundreds of thousands of females
have come ashore, heavy with young.
Within a few days, they give birth to a single black pup
and then breed.
300,000 pups are born on the Pribilofs each year.
Many die in the first few weeks of life from natural causes.
More die in years when fur seals are
numerous than in the years when populations are low.
Scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service
keep close watch over these breeding rookeries.
They're studying pups deaths, food habits, and behavior.
We now know that fur seals are significant competitors
with humans for seafoods.
On the average, each fur seal eats one metric ton
of fish and shellfish each year.
Dr. Alverson of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
We've done some very intensive studies
in the Bering Sea of the interaction between fish,
marine mammals, and man.
Our studies demonstrate several factors
regarding the Bering Sea.
One, there are very large populations of marine mammals,
dominated, of course, by fur seals.
There are large populations of fishes,
one of the most productive fishing areas in the world.
If one looks at the utilization of that resource
by, first, marine mammals and then human harvest,
one finds that the marine mammals are taking probably
two to three times the amount of fish and shellfish
out of the Bering Sea than are harvested
by commercial fisherman.
Direct marine mammal-fishery conflicts
are frequent and intense.
And they're likely to get worse.
Solutions to these problems are not going to come easily.
There are many different ideas about how best to proceed.
Some protectionists say, leave marine mammals alone.
Let them find their own natural balance
with the fishery resources.
Fishermen say, we can't afford to share so much with such
an effective competitor.
In a world with so much hunger, why
not harvest what nature provides?
To fishermen, blanket protection of marine mammals
does not make sense.
They claim that such a policy violates
the intent of another congressional act,
the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976,
or the FCMA.
Well, the FCMA and the Marine Mammal Protection Act
were drafted, really, by different people
at different times with different interests.
And you'll find if you examine them carefully,
they do have different definitions,
different general objectives, and, perhaps, different goals.
Tom Kimball of the National Wildlife Federation.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act is primarily designed for that,
and that's protection.
The Fisheries Management Act, the principal thrust
is designed for a wise use.
In both cases, I think, the implication
is that they want proper management of the species.
But to the extent that one is directed primarily
to protection, the other one directed towards wise use,
makes them, to a degree, incompatible.
Management includes both protection and wise use.
And those laws should be changed to whatever degree is necessary
so that that remains the principal objective.
We want to protect animals when they need protection, when we
can wisely utilize the surplus.
I believe that that's in the overall public interest.
We do have an example of marine mammal management in US waters
on the Pribilofs.
Fur seals are exempt from the Marine Mammal Protection Act
and are managed under the provisions
of an international treaty.
The treaty, signed by Japan, Russia, Canada, and the United
States, put an end to decades of uncontrolled killing
of fur seals by many nations.
Under the protection of the treaty,
the fur seal population rebounded.
The United States was given overall responsibility here
and uses a variety of management tools to keep the herd healthy.
Part of the fur seal management scheme
involves harvesting some of the population.
The Pribilof Program is based on the biology of the fur seal.
Only the strongest bulls hold a place on the rookery,
attract females, and breed.
The other males congregate around the fringe.
Every year, about 25,000 of these young bachelor males
are herded together and harvested.
The first seal harvest is bloody and hard to look at.
It may have shocked you.
Many people don't want marine mammals harvested--
not for fur coats, not for pet food, and not in the name
of good management.
Others say we harvest mammals all the time.
We hunt deer.
We slaughter livestock.
The outdoor slaughter house on the Pribilofs,
while it may be offensive to some,
is at least as humane as any other method we
use to obtain meat and leather.
If you think managing a single species like the fur seal is
difficult, imagine setting up a management scheme
for 10 different species.
The marine mammals coordinator for Alaska's Fish
and Game Department has been wrestling with this problem.
Trying to balance the need for marine mammal protection
with the need for a wise use of all resources.
But so far, John Burns has run into endless red tape working
with the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Well, the Act was truly conceived in idealism
and in response to concern about what
was happening to certain marine mammals in the world.
And it begins by stating that it is recognized
that certain species of marine mammals
are endangered and goes very rapidly
to including all marine mammals, endangered or not endangered.
And the wording of the Act is very flexible.
The wording of the Act is very broad.
And it is the basis upon which much more stringent regulations
are imposed.
And it's the regulations themselves
that, one, in our opinion, deviate
from the intent of the Act, and two,
allow us or don't allow us to really carry out
the intent of the Act.
John Burns believes that the writers'
intended marine mammal populations
to be managed by biologists.
He complains that the decisions are now
being made in the courts without adequate scientific input.
A group of Oregon State University scientists
and students have been studying whales, seals, and sea lions
from Mexico to the Bering Sea.
Using the Yaquina Head Lighthouse as an observation
post, they count gray whales on their annual migration.
Head of the project, Dr. Bruce Mate
says the conflicts and problems are here today,
but the scientific information needed to solve them
will take years to obtain.
I think, actually, when the Marine Mammal Protection
Act was passed, there was a feeling
that we knew much more than what we do.
As a result of Marine Mammal Protection Act,
we found places where we need a lot more information
to apply management properly.
I think that we have difficulty addressing all the questions
for all the species for which there is a problem.
We have limited resources, limited technical skills,
and that to find the answers to some questions about why
certain animal populations do not respond, even
under protection, with increasing their numbers,
it will be quite awhile before-- or if ever
to find out the answers to some of these questions.
Much of the heat in the marine mammal controversy
seems to be unjustified--
the result of bad information and no information.
For example, people claim that expanding seal populations
are to blame for poor salmon harvest in the Northwest.
And that's not exactly true.
Many people believe that all whales are endangered.
And that's not true either.
Many whale populations are doing very well.
One thing is sure, the intensity of the arguments
would be reduced if we had substantially more and better
information--
scientific information about marine mammals.
Finally, there are several pieces of legislation
affecting marine mammals.
They were written at different times
by special interest groups with very different objectives.
These differences have led to bitter arguments and confusion
about congressional intent.
So what do we do?
Somehow we have to untangle these conflicting Acts.
We may ultimately need a comprehensive and deliberate
ocean policy, one that takes into account our need for fish,
our need for marine mammals, and the greater
need for a healthy ocean.
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