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Letter to the Editor

Date: November 9, 2006 2:56:32 PM PST
To: "To the Editor":
Subject: Boats Harm Whales

To the Editor,

Last week, in a letter written by whale watch operator Bill Carli, he said two things which operators have been saying for ten years.� Here is the first:

"There is no scientific evidence that whale-watching boats have a negative impact on the whales."

I am here listing a fraction of the recent scientific papers showing direct negative impacts of boats on whales:

Lusseau, D. 2004. The hidden cost of tourism: detecting long-term effects of tourism using behavioral information. Ecology and Society 9(1): 2. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art2/

Concurrent Technologies Corporation, Dec. 2005� Underwater Acoustic Habitat Technical Memorandum. Contract submitted to NOAA

Williams, R, D. Lusseau and P.S. Hammond 2006.� Estimating relative energetic costs of human disturbance to killer whales (Orcinus orca).� Biol. Cons. 133:301-311

Williams, R, and E. Ashe 2006. Northern Resident killer whale responses to vessels varied with number of boats.� NOAA Fisheries Contract.

Bain, D.E., R. Williams and D. Lusseau 2006. Effects of vessels on behavior of southern resident killer whales (Orcinus spp.)� NMFS Contract Report.

Bejder, L. et. al. 2006.� Decline in relatiave abundance of bottlenose dolphins exposed to long-term disturbance.� Cons. Biol.

We are posting a bibliography of over 20 papers in addition to these, on our site, all showing negative impacts of boats on whales.

Knowing even the possibility that boats harm whales, how could any whale watch operator not take the personal responsibility to learn the science on this issue?� Indeed, every paper ever published on the question shows only negative impacts of boats on whales.

Here is the second most-common whale watch operator statement:

"If I felt I was causing any stress or in any way being harmful to the orcas, I would quit doing whale watching tours today."

I am challenging Bill, and his fellow operators, to be true to their word.� Now you have the proof.� Do you have the courage of your convictions?� The science is clear: boats cause whales to swim further and faster, raising their metabolic rates (stress), requiring more food, impairing their sonar, while simultaneously making catching food much more difficult.� Boats are the single covariant, along with lowered fish count, that correlates with increased orca death rates.� One orca has been killed, and one injured, from direct boat strikes.

In times of low Chinook count, boat harrassment doesn't just harm whales, it kills them.�

Don't blame toxins.

Our whales are dying with ribs showing.� Toxins don't cause adult whales to starve; boat harassment, linked with low fish count, does.� Toxins cause low sperm count, as another whale watcher recently pointed out; this is the only problem our whales don't seem to have, since we have plenty of babies. As Doug McMaster, then head of the NMFS Marine Mammal Laboratory, said to operators years ago: "this population decline is not caused by toxins."

Will you now quit?� Others have, and with honor.

I hope that every whale watch operator will consider it his or her personal responsibility to read the science on this question, and to make a personal decision about the ethics of continuing something with proven negative impact on the orca.

And for those of you who will not stop, for whatever reasons; please consider an organized reduction in days, and times of day.� This isn't about proving your lobbying power: it's about losing our local whales.�

I hope that you, Bill, and your co-operators will do the right thing.� It's time.

Sincerely,

Mark R. Anderson
Chairman
Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance

After Decades of Fear and Hostility, Are We Loving Orcas to Death?

By PEGGY ANDERSEN
The Associated Press
May 9, 2006

SEATTLE - Fifty years ago, fishermen shot at Northwest killer whales they felt were eating too many salmon. Now, thousands of visitors pay an average of $75 a trip to see the orcas in their summer habitat around the San Juan Islands.

The love sightseers feel for the orcas, however, may be getting overwhelming for the bus-sized mammals. As many as 100 tour boats can be on the water at once, all jockeying for a good look at the animals, and researchers are concerned that the in-your-face attention is harassing orcas and keeping them from their prey.

"No doubt the perception of these whales has changed from something to be feared and destroyed to something to be hugged," said orca expert Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research in the San Juan Islands. "And now along comes too much hugging."

Orcas, actually a kind of dolphin found in all the world's oceans, are prime examples of what researchers call "charismatic megafauna," big critters with a passionate human following. But the species' San Juan population has paid a price for some forms of that adoration.

Namu, a killer whale caught accidentally in a fishing net in 1965, became a Seattle waterfront sensation until his death a year later, helping create a demand for orcas in the booming new marine-aquarium trade. Dozens were caught and shipped, but just two survive Lolita at the Miami Seaquarium, and Corky at Sea World in San Diego.

Northwest captures were stopped in the 1970s, though the resident population which now numbers 87 is still struggling to recover to pre-capture levels, believed to have been about 120. Resident orcas that chase salmon in waters off Washington and British Columbia have been declared endangered by U.S. and Canadian authorities.

Researchers said the orcas are suffering from declining salmon runs, pollution and general vessel traffic, but also from the effects of the thriving whale-watching industry. As many as half a million visitors a year take tours offered by 30 companies or watch orcas from recreational craft.

"Anyone who's been in a crowded bar at night trying to talk to the person next to you should understand what that's like," said Mark Pakenham, who has worked with Canada's federally funded monitoring program.

At a recent U.S.-Canada symposium on how to help the population, University of Washington researcher David Bain reported declines in foraging of more than 30 percent when boats were present. The closer the boats came to whales, the steeper the decline.

Federal law requires vessels to cut their engines at 400 feet and to stay at least 100 yards away to avoid harassing the whales or hindering their ability to find prey. Both the U.S. and Canada have monitors on the water during the peak season.

But Canada has prosecuted just two whale-watch boat operators, fining each $6,500 for operating their vessels while surrounded by orcas, and the U.S. has yet to penalize anyone.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is investigating what would be the first whale-watching violation, for an incident that the skipper involved reported.

Last summer, a whale bumped a boat skippered by Brett Soberg of Victoria-based Eagle Wing Eco Tours. The boat wasn't moving, and Soberg quickly alerted authorities.

The whales were playing and changing direction, said Balcomb, who witnessed the encounter. "You couldn't have predicted it," he said. But that doesn't mean there should be no consequences, he added.

Soberg had been chided earlier by the Canadians for repeatedly parking in the path of the whales. It's a common violation, as vessels jockey for the best vantage point.

"Last year we recorded about 800 incidents in the summer... and about 550 were for parking in the path of whales," Pakenham said.

Talks on changes in whale-watching guidelines the government's and the industry's are ongoing.

Balcomb suggests the industry vessels travel as a group. "To people on shore and on other boats, it looks like a free-for-all out there," he said.

On the Net:

National Marine Fisheries Service: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov
Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest: http://www.nwwhalewatchers.org
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright � 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

How to save Sound's orcas? Here's one plan

Tuesday, October 4, 2005
By LISA STIFFLER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

A proposed coordinated plan to save Puget Sound's orcas focuses on preventing oil spills and learning more about the harm caused by boat noise, pollution and salmon shortages.

The conservation strategy released Monday by the National Marine Fisheries Service strives to maintain the resident killer-whale population at between 84 and 120.

The current population is estimated at 91 orcas, according to the federal agency, but dipped to 79 as recently as four years ago.

Myriad problems stand in the way of a rebound.

"It's about the habitat; it's about prey availability; it's about the whole ecosystem," said Joe Gaydos, regional director of the SeaDoc Society, a non-profit group focused on marine health. "It's not a slam-dunk."

Contamination from industrial chemicals can hamper marine mammals' ability to reproduce and weaken their immune systems. The amount of salmon, orcas' preferred food, has declined from historic levels. And boat traffic and noise is suspected of disturbing the orcas, possibly reducing their ability to communicate and hunt for fish.

The orcas reside much of the year in the Sound, particularly around the San Juan Islands.

In 2003, the Fisheries Service deemed the local orcas "depleted" and eligible for increased protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, spurring creation of the proposed conservation plan.

Late last year, the agency proposed protecting the orcas under the more stringent Endangered Species Act, after initially denying protection. A determination will be made in December.

If the orcas are provided increased protection, the agency will need to create a recovery plan and could "roll" the conservation plan into it, said Brian Gorman, a Seattle-based spokesman for the Fisheries Service.

The proposed plan arranges by priority the greatest threats to the orcas, focusing on oil-spill prevention and response, controlling pollution that comes from storm-water runoff and cleaning contamination and boosting salmon numbers.

Saving orcas will be costly, requiring more than $1.5 million in funding this year alone, according to the conservation plan.

The effort also will require help from local and state agencies, non-profit groups, tribes and the public.

ON THE WEB

Read the proposed conservation plan for local orcas online: www.nwr.noaa.gov/mmammals/whales/CPPSKW.html.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com.

Proposed killer whale conservation plan released for comment

By PEGGY ANDERSEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
October 3, 2005

SEATTLE -- The National Marine Fisheries Service on Monday released its proposed conservation plan for the killer whales that spend summers around the San Juan Islands.

The plan addresses such concerns as availability of prey - predominantly salmon for these "southern resident" orcas - as well as pollution and disruption by boats.

But environmentalists worry about changes under consideration in Congress to species protection laws.

If those changes take effect, "no matter how good this plan is, our ability to protect the southern residents is going to be diminished," said Brent Plater of the San Francisco-based Council for Biological Diversity.

The draft conservation plan was prepared following the Fisheries Service's 2003 decision to list the orcas as "depleted" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. That law extends protection only to the species itself; it does not include habitat.

The draft plan is open to public comment and could take effect by the end of the year, said NMFS spokesman Brian Gorman in Seattle.

That's about the time the agency will be making its final decision on a "threatened" listing for the 91-member orca population under the Endangered Species Act. A listing under that law would extend protection to the killer whales' habitat.

"Till I see what they define as critical habitat, this is only half a pie," said Fred Felleman of the Seattle-based Orca Conservancy.

"One of great threats facing marine mammals in the ocean is acoustic pollution - noise pollution - which is impeding the whales' ability to find food and communicate with each other," Plater said.

"They really need to start monitoring marine acoustic pollution and how much whale watching goes on," Felleman said. "We say there are problems but we don't know how big a problem it is because we haven't even measured that."

The proposal incorporates public comment gathered through last spring. The Fisheries Service identified three primary concerns: availability of prey, pollution and disruptions from vessels. Oil spills and disease also are possible threats, the agency said in a news release.

The proposed plan offers measures to address each of the threats, and also identifies conservation efforts already under way. In addition, it outlines an approach that would update conservation efforts as new information becomes available.

In 2003, the Fisheries Service concluded these orcas did not warrant Endangered Species Act protection because the population did not meet the definition of being biologically distinct from other killer whales. A federal judge last year ordered the agency to reconsider, after eight environmental groups and concerned individuals filed a lawsuit.

In December 2004, the agency proposed listing the orcas as threatened - allowing a period for public comment that comes to a close at the end of this year.

Both the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act are under fire in the Republican-dominated Congress, Plater said. In legislation that he said "guts" the ESA, the House has approved transferring responsibility for the orcas to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Reforming the law should not be a euphemism for gutting the law, and that's exactly what the bill would do," Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a moderate Republican from New York, said when the bill passed the House last Friday.

A proposed Hurricane Katrina-relief bill contains a rider to destroy the marine mammal act, Plater said. Both measures were sponsored by House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif. The Senate has not yet weighed in on either measure.

The southern resident population plummeted from a high of around 97 animals in 1996 to just 79 in 2001. It's now estimated at 91.

These orcas feed almost exclusively on salmon, ranging as far south as California and north into British Columbia waters. Some orcas in other areas feed on other marine mammals, such as seals or whales, or a combination of mammals and fish.

---

On the Net:

National Marine Fisheries Service, http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov

Endangered Species Act: http://www.fws.gov/endangered/esa.html

Column: Pimping wildlife for economic development

By Dr. Birgit Kriete September 30 2005

Sept. 28 and 29, Friday Harbor hosted the 2005 Watchable Wildlife Conference, sponsored by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington State Tourism, Washington State Department of Transportation and NOAA.

As an environmentalist and animal advocate, I hoped for a balance of presentations regarding watchable wildlife in Washington state, if not for speakers to urge protective ways of watching one of Washington's greatest resources to preserve it for future generations.

Instead, I experienced a cookbook recipe for enticing more visitors to come to the islands, how to extend the tourism season and how to ensure that we have plenty of activities, sufficient accommodation and good infrastructure in place, and the desire to increase the Washington tourism income from $11.7 billion to $15 billion during the next few years.

Today, Washington state income from watching wildlife is around $1 billion on an annual basis. Watching wildlife is a major advertising point in attracting visitors to the San Juan Islands. But, at what cost to our wildlife is all of this happening?

Here in the San Juan Islands and probably in Washington state, killer whales are the superstars of wildlife. Millions are spent every year advertising this resource; millions are spent by visitors seeing this wildlife. Orca whales may soon be listed on the endangered species list, an even more enticing reason for tourists to see them. But at what, and whose, costs?

What is our community willing to share and what are we not willing to share? To answer this, we must decide how we want to see our islands in five, 10 and 50 years.

Do we go all the way to entice tourism or do we step back and re-assess the future of our environment and community? Just before the end of the conference, someone asked an excellent question, "Are we pimping wildlife for economic development?"

We have been encouraging visitors to come here to receive a profit off of a magnificent resource for our benefit, but with no return for wildlife. In our current way of thinking, we believe we have the "right" to travel, to see what we consider interesting. Tourism has taken over in many places around the world, edging out wildlife and civic life.

We need to have a visionary plan to protect our environment, how to save our wildlife from being "loved to death" and how to save our identity as islanders.

San Juan Island Journal

Letter to the Editor - September 2003
Health of the Whales vs. Health of the Whalewatchers

According to the September 3 article by Kelly Balcomb-Bartok introducing the new owners of Western Prince Cruises, "there are now an estimated 80 boats in the Pacific Northwest plying these waters offering wildlife tours." The article talks about how healthy the whale watching industry is and how many new whale watching outfits have sprouted up in the past dozen years. If only the whales themselves were as healthy.

I see the Orcas pass by our property on almost a daily basis when they're in the islands. The whales are easy to spot; just look for the hordes of boats chasing them. I've met with several neighbors who are deeply troubled by the ongoing harassment of the whales. We think it's ridiculous to be applauding the whale watching industry when it is threatening the whales themselves. Orca Relief (http://www.orcarelief.org/) has done research that shows whale watching boats impact the whales negatively. At a time when the Orca population is threatened, it is irresponsible to continue to tout the Whale Chasing Industry.

Even the Whale Museum is at fault. In the Sept. 3 paper, there is also a news item about the Whale Museum's membership drive. Most people probably think (as I did when I moved here three years ago) that the Whale Museum is an independent entity that is primarily concerned with the health and well being of the whales themselves. It's not. It is a compromised entity that is supported by the whale watching industry. If you are concerned about the whales themselves, do not support this organization. Instead, direct your dollars to Orca Relief, which is working to protect the whales and not the businesses that feed off them.

Sincerely,
Monica Harrington

San Juan Island Journal

Letter to the Editor
What is Killing Our Whales? And Who Is Making The Money?
by Mark Anderson
I went to a meeting last week, called by a well-intended animal rights group, to discuss what is killing the local killer whales, and what could be done about it. As is usual in our town for meetings on this subject, over half of the attendees were directly involved in making money through commercial whale watching. The meeting had been called for the same evening as a general candidates' forum, so hardly any of the local citizenry (you) attended. Read more...

Seattle Weekly

Letter to the Editor
by Scott Milburn
In reading the article on Springer and the plight of the Southern Resident Orca population (August 1), I was struck by the hypocrisy of the whale watch boat community. Three recently released scientific studies demonstrate that the boats with tourists swarming over the Orcas significantly impact their survivability. Read more...

July 4, 2002, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

San Juan Island is a happenin' place for land-based whale watching
by Amy Poffenbarger
Orca watching is a quintessential Northwest summertime activity, and there isn't a better place in the contiguous United States to see these majestic creatures from land than this island's rocky outer coast. At Lime Kiln Point State Park, nicknamed Whale Watch Park, you can see orcas up close as they move along Haro Strait and around Deadman Bay. Read more...

July 17, 2002, Journal of the San Juans

Anderson reselected for Fortune panel
    or the second year in a row, Mark Anderson has been selected as a participant in Fortune magazine's invitation only Brainstorm conference, originally called "The 100 Smartest People We Know."
    Anderson is a long-time resident of San Juan Island and the president of Strategic News Service, the Technology Alliance Partners and Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance.
    The group of though leaders will exchange ideas on a wide range of topics on July 29-31 in Aspen, CO. The program includes panels, short vignettes, and interviews by Fortune editors.
    The first Brainstorm was held in Aspen in August 2001, and resulted in articles and online comments by attendees Madeleine Albright, Marc Andreessen, Bill Clinton, John Doerr, Michael Eisner, Juan Hernandez, Bill Joy, Shelly Lazarus, Gerald Levin, Dawn Meyerriciecks, and N. Scott Momaday.

June 26, 2002, Journal of the San Juans

Letter to the Editor
by Birgit Kriete, Ph.D.
    It was interesting to see in the June 12 issue that the commercial whale watch industry, which professes to love our orca, refuses to even consider that boat engine noise impacts their survival ability. It is difficult, however, to credibly deny scientific research.
    I have studied metabolic rates of this whale population since the 1980's. Overall metabolic rates in populations remain constant absent physiological or emotional pressures. There have clearly been such pressures here because the whales travel and breathe much faster than 15 years ago, and they have changed their daily rhythms. As a result, they need to consume close to 20% more food to make up for the extra energy expenditure. What could cause such a change.
    One recent study demonstrates that the volume and frequencies of boat engine noise may severely limit the whales' ability to find food, a serious factor given the depletion of salmon.
Read more...

June 19, 2002, Journal of the San Juans

Letter to the Editor: An Orca Noise Ordinance
by Jim Nollman, Citizen of Friday Harbor, WA
Several articles in last week's paper sounded a bit too unanimous in their outrage over Orca Relief's claim of discovering a cause and effect relationship between power boat noise and orca mortality. Local activists, biologists, and tour operators who criticize Orca Relief as "anti-whalewatching" seem disingenuous. Trying to understand how this newspaper could publish such one-sided criticism without a word in response from Orca Relief, makes me cringe to consider the power of all those tourism ads.
Let's be honest here. At a meeting in Bellingham last fall, attended by wildlife professionals from around the State, everyone in attendance agreed that toxins, lack of fish, and boat noise, in that order, were the 3 major problems impacting our local orcas. While almost everyone there promoted triage, focusing limited public resources on the three in their order of importance, Mark Anderson of Orca Relief pointed out the obvious, that cleaning up Puget Sound and replenishing the salmon were monumental jobs that spanned generations, but we could do something almost immediately about boat noise by drafting a few incisive regulations. Read more...

June 2, 2002, Seattle Times

Orca advocacy group blames boats for harm
by Bobbi Nodell, Seattle Times staff reporter
Three local studies released yesterday say noise from whale-watching boats is wreaking havoc on the killer-whale population and may be the primary cause for the whales' death spiral in Puget Sound. According to generally accepted numbers, the population of the southern-resident orcas, which spend between three and eight months in the San Juan Islands, has fallen from 98 in 1995 to 80 in 2002. About the same time, the number of whale-watching boats in the area has increased from 42 to more than 82 today. Whale observers say that during the height of the tourist season, 18 to 35 boats surround a whale. Read more...

June 1, 2002, Seattle Post Intelligencer

Teamwork urged to help orcas
by Peggy Andersen, Associated Press
Sen. Maria Cantwell opened the three-day Orca Recovery Conference with a plea yesterday for better protection of killer whales, whose numbers are dwindling due to pollution and other pressures. The state's junior U.S. senator made four recommendations in her keynote address at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. All of them are linked to the troubles of the orphaned female orca from Canada that has been hanging around the Vashon Island ferry dock since January. Cantwell called for a formal U.S.-Canadian protocol to allow speedy handling of situations like this, a proposal also backed by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. Cantwell also urged new restrictions on whale-watching operations, increased federal protections for the region's dwindling orca population and more funds for whale research and rescue programs. Read more...

Letter to the Editor: What is killing our whales? And who is making the Money

Letter sent to and published by the Journal of the San Juans on October 2002.
By Mark Anderson, Founder of the Whale Museum and the Strategic News Service

     I went to a meeting last week, called by a well-intended animal rights group, to discuss what is killing the local killer whales, and what could be done about it. As is usual in our town for meetings on this subject, over half of the attendees were directly   involved in making money through commercial whale watching. The meeting had been called for the same evening as a general candidates' forum, so hardly any of the local citizenry (you) attended.

     The first speaker, photographer and naturalist Ken Balcomb, neglected to mention that he makes over $50k per year taking eco-tourists out to watch whales. In fact, Ken was the original whale watch operator, something few on this island understand. As with all other people making money this way, he refused to discuss the near-unanimous international scientific view, which is that boat interactions are contributing to whale death, even though it is so listed in one of his own published papers.

     Dr. Birgit Kriete, the Executive Director of Orca Relief, gave a reasoned presentation of the latest three science studies, (two done in concert with the University of Washington and faculty), indicating the likely role that boats play in whale death.

     The rest of the evening was composed of two types of response: a plea for funds from a local advisory craft group called Soundwatch, which may improve boat behavior around whales, but whose existence timeline exactly overlaps the decline of the whales; and boat operators angrily shouting questions about the scientific studies, or deriding the value of all science per se.

     The Journal then came out with an article which was so commercially attractive that it became a four-page advertising section for whale watching, in which the scientific studies were never mentioned once. So much advertising was sold for this section that you ran the half-page Soundwatch whale watch guidelines, not once, but twice, in four pages. But no science.

     I'd like to support an idea which sounds so old-fashioned that it may take a moment to sink in: Intellectual Honesty. This isn't honesty per se, which is capturing business headlines minute by minute, but something a bit more focused. Anyone can commit regular old highway robbery, or fraud; you just break the law. Anyone can simply be dishonest; some would suggest it comes all to easily, particularly in trying times.

     But it takes a special kind of person to be intellectually dishonest; i.e., to do something which he or she knows is wrong, and then to make whatever rationalizations and arguments are necessary for appearances' sake, so that, after awhile, even he or she may not be aware of the ethical lapse involved.

     At one point during the whale meeting, it came out that the whale watch operators had just given $5,000. to Soundwatch (this, it seems, is a record gift in a down giving year). One of the Soundwatch folks immediately tried to contain the damage (appearance of conflict of interest) by minimizing the donation: "it's only three percent of our budget." A little math would imply that Soundwatch had a $167K budget. But in the newspaper last week, the head of the Whale Museum, the parent organization, said the program budget was $80-90k. (Do you think either number is real?)

     But Soundwatch was only on the water part time this year (three days a week), so cut that in half, and I have a feeling that the Cash Budget is a fraction of this proposed budget. What is the real cash proportion of the Soundwatch budget paid by the whale watch operators? No one is telling (I have tried to obtain this information before), but I would not be surprised if the truth were closer to 25-50%, not 3%, with the balance made up in in-kind services, job-sharing, etcPeople would view Soundwatch more critically if they knew this, and Soundwatch knows it, and the whale watch operators know it, and no one wants the real (cash) numbers out. So there is not only the question of Soundwatch not preventing whale death, but of general conflict of interest.

     The operators can point to Soundwatch, and say they are doing great things; and Soundwatch can point to the operators, and vice versa. Indeed, this is what they each do, at every meeting. When Bill Wright, the first whale watch operator to speak that evening, began by saying, "As Soundwatch will tell you later this evening --" How did he know what they were going to say?

     The people who work for both groups may be great people, but the whales are dying, and this is the wrong time for mutual self-congratulation. Since Soundwatch does not stop whale death, people who care about whales dying should be focused on the question, What Causes It?

     We're working on this. And, so far, science on both sides of the border indicates that boats directly contribute to whale death. Please visit our website to learn about the studies you did not read about in last week's Journal stories.

   Mark Anderson
   Co-founder, The Whale Museum, and
   President
   Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance
   http://www.orcarelief.org

Sincerely,
Mark R. Anderson

Letter to the Editor

Letter sent to and published by the Journal of the San Juans on Wednesday, June 26, 2002.
By Birgit Kriete, Ph.D.
Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance

    It was interesting to see in the June 12 issue that the commercial whale watch industry, which professes to love our orca, refuses to even consider that boat engine noise impacts their survival ability. It is difficult, however, to credibly deny scientific research.

    I have studied metabolic rates of this whale population since the 1980's. Overall metabolic rates in populations remain constant absent physiological or emotional pressures. There have clearly been such pressures here because the whales travel and breathe much faster than 15 years ago, and they have changed their daily rhythms. As a result, they need to consume close to 20% more food to make up for the extra energy expenditure. What could cause such a change.

    One recent study demonstrates that the volume and frequencies of boat engine noise may severely limit the whales' ability to find food, a serious factor given the depletion of salmon. While boats have been in our waters for decades, in the past people fished for a living, with larger boats whose lower frequency engines may not interfere with orca echolocation, and the whales could swim around the boats and were not followed. This has changed to dozens of smaller boats with high frequency engines, solely on the water to find and follow the whales - 12 hours a day and up to six months per year.

    Boat noise has very negative impacts on Hawaiian humpbacks; the whales swim three times faster, remain under water for longer periods, and try to "escape." Boats have detrimental effects on the highly endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. Boats impact whales, no question about it. Imagine, then, the effect upon whales like orca who use sound to hunt.

    There are, of course, factors that cannot be changed easily or at all: natural variations (El Nino, salmon survival), the possible Elwa dam removal, and toxins previously deposited into our environment. While all these are extremely important, we do not have time to secure a future for our local orca if we limit our efforts to them. The Center for Biological Diversity has modeled that this whale population can be wiped out in as little as 30 years.

    Common sense alone tells us what science confirms: boats do have an impact on whales. It is something we can easily alter - limit the amount of boats and the time the whales are exposed to noise and boats in close proximity - to allow them to hunt efficiently and without added stress.

    The assertion that commercial whale watch boats can monitor their own behavior is clearly not true. In her keynote speech to the Orca Recovery Conference, Senator Maria Cantwell stated that although some guidelines exist, more needs to be done. Just two weeks ago, commercial whale watch boats were seen leapfrogging and were within 100 yards of Hannah Heights and within 10 yards of the whales. While the engines might be idling or shut off, this manipulation of voluntary guidelines and the established Marine Mammal Protection Act aids only some peoples' pocketbooks, to the detriment of our whales.

    The boat owners' call for more research is a diversionary tactic. Further research is always valuable, but it is obvious that we must limit boat behavior around the whales now, not years from now. The number of boats and number of hours must be reduced. Once the whales are gone, no one will be able to see them any more - not from a boat and not from shore.

    A University of Washington study concludes that growth of the whale watch fleet is the variable most closely correlated with orca decline. Anyone who truly loves and cares for the orca cannot deny that the boats appear to have an impact on their health and well-being. This is one impact that we can alter immediately.

Letter to the Editor: An Orca Noise Ordinance

Letter sent to and published by the Journal of the San Juans on Wednesday, June 19, 2002.
by Jim Nollman, Citizen of Friday Harbor, WA

    Several articles in last week's paper sounded a bit too unanimous in their outrage over Orca Relief's claim of discovering a cause and effect relationship between power boat noise and orca mortality. Local activists, biologists, and tour operators who criticize Orca Relief as "anti-whalewatching" seem disingenuous. Trying to understand how this newspaper could publish such one-sided criticism without a word in response from Orca Relief, makes me cringe to consider the power of all those tourism ads.

    Let's be honest here. At a meeting in Bellingham last fall, attended by wildlife professionals from around the State, everyone in attendance agreed that toxins, lack of fish, and boat noise, in that order, were the 3 major problems impacting our local orcas. While almost everyone there promoted triage, focusing limited public resources on the three in their order of importance, Mark Anderson of Orca Relief pointed out the obvious, that cleaning up Puget Sound and replenishing the salmon were monumental jobs that spanned generations, but we could do something almost immediately about boat noise by drafting a few incisive regulations.

    That boat noise affects an orcas ability to find food is not rocket science. Orcas rely on echolocation as their primary sense to hunt prey. The analogy might be made that boat noise is to a hunting orca as a spotlight in your eyes is to you while driving a car at night. Too many spotlights and, hopefully, you stop the car. Too many noisy boats and an orca expends a lot more energy catching a meal. Obviously, when fish are scarce, boat noise becomes an added imposition to the hunt. If the animals lose weight as a result, the toxins in their blubber become more concentrated. In other words, everything is connected. It's the central tenet of the ecology. By comparison, triage is a mental construction that relies on reductionist logic to separate within the human brain that which nature does not, and can not separate.

    Boat noise is not a negligible issue. To be accurate, the problem is not whale watching, but powerboats that get too close to the whales. That a number of whalewatching tours use boats with exceedingly noisy engines is a function of scale, of operators choosing to moor in Friday Harbor and Victoria, and therefore traveling far, very fast, with lots of people onboard. And though a few operators may turn off their engines near the whales, many boats, including some of the commercial outfits, don't. You can see it on display at Lime Kiln on any summer's afternoon. By the way, Lime Kiln is also a key part of the solution. Instead of this community boostering boat tours, we ought to be putting more effort into promoting Lime Kiln to watch whales. It is, after all, the best shore-based whalewatching site in all of North America.

    We need a noise ordinance in protection of the whales. Clearly the rules governing how boats operate could better reflect how an orca relies on sound. For just one example, setting an arbitrary distance between boats and whales doesn't properly confront the noise issue because the Western Prince and nineteen private bayliners at 200 feet are always going to muddy the whale's sonic perception far more than 20 kayaks at arm's length.

    Please, let's not spend 5 years paying scientists to construct acoustic algorithms to determine how loud an engine can be before it keeps an orca from actually catching a salmon. We'll never get an answer that way. When scientists say they need more studies, it sometimes means they'll eventually have an answer, although just as often it means they don't have a clue. The relationship between human-caused noise and orca echolocation can often vary depending on water depth, bottom contour, shore geology, current, a whale's individual health, and perhaps even the resonant frequencies from boat to boat and from whale to whale. As long as the word "vary" appears in any study people who place noisy boats in the whale's vicinity can argue that the result is inconclusive. Such uncertainty cultivates a spiral of more studies ad infinitum even as the orca population continues to deplete.

    People in this County love their orcas. We also loves our boats. Surely we can continue loving our boats while exhibiting a little more sensitivity to the whales needs.

Letter to the Editor, Seattle Weekly

by Scott Milburn

    In reading the article on Springer and the plight of the Southern Resident Orca population (August 1), I was struck by the hypocrisy of the whale watch boat community.

    Three recently released scientific studies demonstrate that the boats with tourists swarming over the Orcas significantly impact their survivability. The frequency of the noise from boat engines decreases the effectiveness of the whales' sonar in the range used to hunt fish by 95-99%, and the presence of the boats causes an increased metabolic rate that causes higher food intake demands at precisely the time the whales have a harder time finding salmon.

    This scientific evidence is consistent with similar findings of detrimental impacts of boat presence/noise on other whale species such as the North Atlantic Right Whale and the Hawaiian Humpbacks. Similarly, the Weekly article noted that as boat traffic increased around Springer, her health deteriorated.

    While it is true that declining salmon populations and toxins introduced into our waters over the last few decades may also be significant contributing factors to the whales' decline, those causes cannot be altered immediately. The damage caused by the boats can.

    The whale watch boat community and its supporters, including several quoted in the article, profess to love the Orcas, yet they refuse to acknowledge even that the boat presence might impact the whales' survivability. With absolutely no science to refute the existing studies, they refer to the scientifically supported concerns about the impact of the boats as a "witch hunt" and a "scapegoat." Such unsupported, broad denial in the face of science and common sense demonstrates that the whale watch boat community loves the money they make off tourists much more than they love the Orcas.

    Anyone who travels to the San Juans and cares about the Orcas should boycott the whale watch boats, because the boat operators refuse to acknowledge that their actions are a contributing factor to the death of the Orcas and modify them accordingly.

ORCA RELIEF CITIZENS' ALLIANCE
P.O. Box 1969 | Friday Harbor, WA | 98250 | Phone: (360) 370-5554 | Fax: (360) 378-7041
email: info@orcarelief.org

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