Tagging a beluga in Cook Inlet near Anchorage
Credit: NMML
More than 130,000 people have now emailed or written the feds about the fate of Cook Inlet’s depleted white whales. With a week to go before public hearings, here’s a glimpse of Knik Arm’s indigenous belugas.
On a summer day three years ago, a pod swam on the rising tide, only about 15 miles upstream from Alaska’s urban center in Anchorage. Their arching backs winked white against the brown water. Their breaths exploded in quick brilliant clouds that faded fast in the sunshine. A few whistled, making a faint and eerie sound.
These were some of the rarest belugas alive — one of the smallest distinct and genetically isolated populations of marine mammals on the planet. On that day in 2004, a couple dozen ventured within a quarter mile of a 12-foot skiff carrying marine mammal biologist Mike Williams and two others, Williams started the motor. He was conducting a survey as part of studies for the Knik Arm bridge crossing, and wanted to reposition the boat to get a better count as the whales swam by.
- Are CI belugas in danger of extinction?
- Tell NOAA by Aug. 3
- Email: CIB-ESA-Endangered@noaa.gov
- w/subject “Cook Inlet Beluga Whale PR”
- Full details & contacts in the proposal
But the belugas — one of the smallest distinct populations of intelligent marine mammals on the planet — apparently recognized the droning of human presence. And what had been a smooth conga line of cruising cetaceans quickly swirled into a tight, water-churning group.
They veered toward the boat in a confused mob, whistling and blowing and trumpeting brassy notes. About 100 yards out, they cut toward shore — white adults and gray babies obscured by the roiling and splashing of the inlet’s silty flow. They were almost impossible to see, let alone count.
Though Williams had benign intentions, with a goal of gathering scientific data for their conservation, the whales wanted nothing to do with a skiff and outboard motor.
“It’s so easy to prescribe some kind of plot (to the whales’ behavior), but I don’t know,” Williams said, watching as the animals finally spread out closer to shore and turned north toward Eklutna near the head of Knik Arm northeast of Anchorage. “There are always going to be way more questions when we’re done.”
It’s now time to start answering those questions.
NOAA Fisheries has proposed protecting the Cook Inlet belugas under the federal Endangered Species Act. It’s a process that will force humans to weigh the health of a unique whale population that exists no where else on earth against human activity in Alaska’s urban heart.
Public hearings will be held in Homer on July 19, Anchorage on July 20, Soldotna on July and Silver Springs, Maryland. The deadline for written comments is Aug. 3.
More details about the meetings have been posted under the beluga ESA link. NOTE: People must resubmit any old beluga comment or information to NOAA. Previous comments about the conservation plan or other beluga management don’t roll over for the ESA proposal.
Belugas swimming off Anchorage
Credit: NMML
Cook Inlet belugas have been declining about 4 percent each year and numbers about 300 — a 70 percent decline since the 1970s. The animals never mingle with other Alaska beluga stocks and could disappear within a century if conditions don’t change.
Though overhunting in the early 1990s helped trigger the crisis, no one knows why the whales continue to slip. The issue over whether the whales now deserve the most stringent level of federal protection will almost certainly divide Anchorage and upper Inlet residents in a ferocious test of values.
Should people spend extra money and possibly disrupt or cancel local projects to help give the whales a better chance to survive? Or is this beluga population — isolated from other belugas in Alaska for at least 10,000 years — simply not important enough by itself to interrupt local activity?Or perhaps nothing can help these whales?
A listing would require federal managers to mount a biological investigation, identify and then protect critical habitat, plus scrutinize human activities to make sure they don’t hamper the recovery of the whales.
It might delay or increase the cost of the proposed bridge across Knik Arm. It might raise troubling or expensive questions about the handling of drilling waste from oil platforms, the dumping of treated sewage from Anchorage, the increases in shipping, noise, development and commercial fishing.
By late June, almost 135,000 people and groups had sent emails to NOAA Fisheries about the proposal to list the whales under the ESA, according to NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman Sheela McLean. An aerial survey in June found belugas in all the usual locales for that season — Knik Arm, the Susitna and Chickaloon river mouths, said beluga management biologist Barbara Manhoney.
Time to act has come.