Makah Whaling

By William Rossiter

Makah Indian whaling entered a new phase with a February request for "a limited waiver of the moratorium on taking marine mammals" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). In response NMFS will conduct public scoping meetings and prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) related to the Makah Tribe's "continuation of treaty right hunting of gray whales". The Makah want to kill up to 20 Eastern North Pacific gray whales during a 5-year period, subject to a maximum of five gray whales in any calendar year, within "its adjudicated usual and accustomed grounds", subject to quotas granted by the IWC. The Makah Tribe proposes to hunt up to seven gray whales per year, to account for whales that are struck but "lost". CSI and many others find the Makah's "subsistence" rationale for the hunt unfounded and unwarranted.

If the Makah Tribe gets a waiver who else is next? The first waiver was for the Department of Defense for "national security", leveraged by 9-11. Most observers immediately became concerned about future MMPA waiver applications by others. The LFA was excluded, as it was involved in a separate decision, but continues under special permit. Many commercial activities restrained by the MMPA are eager to seek relief. The imploring scenarios are endless: If an entire fishing community is failing because of MMPA restrictions should they be given a waiver? What about seismic surveys to find the last drop of oil in a pristine bay full of dolphins?

Written or electronic comments on the federal waiver action must be received no later than 5 p.m. PDT October 24, 2005. Four public scoping meetings were scheduled. At the first, at Neah Bay, the emboldened Makah even demanded that commercial whaling be included in the EIS. About that time it became known that a Makah Indian had whaled with the Chukotkan people of Russia in August, during an invited visit by several Makah for "a cultural and scientific exchange." An informal statement by NMFS said that: "Activities conducted two miles from shore were within the territorial sea and jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and, therefore, not within the high seas subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." In other words, it's acceptable for the Makah to kill whales in another nation's territorial waters. At least three gray whales were killed by the Russians.

CSI opposes the Makah gray whale hunt, for the same reasons we and many others have repeated during a long and bitter battle during which the Makah Tribe itself has suffered, not from the lack of taking a whale, but from the loss of respect of so many people, local and around the world, that are adamantly opposed to this killing.