Bringing back the belugas to the Bay

“This has been a very long time coming … It should have happened years ago.”
– Nancy Lord,
author of “Beluga Days”

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently proposing the designation of 3,016 miles of critical marine habitat for Cook Inlet beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act in both Upper Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay. The deadline for comments from the public on the proposal is Feb 1. 2010.
The matter, though not yet decided, is meant to find a way to protect habitat used traditionally by the Cook Inlet beluga, a genetically distinct group that has dwindled to about 300 members.
The protective designation couldn’t come too soon for Nancy Lord, author of “Beluga Days.” Her book, published in 2004, takes a long look at the challenges to protecting the whale amid economic, cultural and political conflicts dating back to the ‘90s.
“This has been a very long time coming,” Lord said. “They are late in doing this. It should have happened years ago.”
Cook InletKeeper Executive Director Bob Shavelson said the time between now and Feb. 1 is simply the commenting period, with a draft proposal for designating habitat coming after that.
“Then, assuming no one sues and gets an injunction, it requires any activity that has a chance to impact that habitat to go through a consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service,” Shavelson said. “It will not shut down economic development. There will be ‘the sky is falling’ rhetoric, but if you look at statistics, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Nationally, only 1/10 of one percent of all projects get stopped because of environmental sensitivity, Shavelson said.
“Any suggestion that we will see a radical change is more overblown rhetoric,” he added. “Now, if a large tanker wants to dump ballast water, we might need to see if it harms beluga habitat.”
Already, a dozen non-native species were counted in the harbor by a Smithsonian study, Shavelson said, including organisms ranging from sponges to microbes. These are thought to be the result of switching out ballast water in tankers; a process necessary to keep the tankers balanced.
Lord pointed out that Kachemak Bay is already a protected habitat area, and has been since the 1970s. This was established after the fight to keep oil companies from setting up petroleum platforms in the Bay. Lord said it was protests from Homer residents about the abundance of marine life in Kachemak Bay that caused the state to purchase back its oil leases.
Shavelson predicts that shipping will likely be impacted the least. Of most concern are projects that propose dredging up habitat or toxic dumping, such as coal waste at the proposed site along the Chuitna.
Officials predict the impact in Kachemak Bay to likely be somewhat light.
And while beluga are no longer seen very frequently in Kachemak Bay, Lord points out that it is a traditional fall and spring habitat for the whales.
“As the population recovers, it will need to spread out. Kachemak Bay is part of their traditional habitat,” Lord said. “This is just one protection in an overall recovery plan, which we still don’t have yet. The new question – since they haven’t been hunted for 10 years – is why are they not recovering?”
According to numbers kept by Homer Port and Harbor Master Bryan Hawkins, traffic at the Homer Harbor comprises a range of marine activity. The harbor recorded 46 landings in 2009 at the Pioneer Dock, including two cruise ships, large vessel dockage, fuel deliveries for the Petro tank farm, NOAA ships, tugs and barges, as well as the ferry system. Those 46 landings do not included dockings by the Alaska Ferry, Tustumena, which averages three trips per week to Homer. It also doesn’t count the Coast Guard Cutter Hickory dockings.
At the Deep Water Dock in 2009, the port recorded another 40 dockings of the same type of traffic: tugs and barges, landing crafts, oil rig supply vessels, oil spill response vessels, Coast Guard, NOAA research and fishing vessels.
In addition to this, five or six taxi boats operate from harbor to state park lands across the Bay, carrying recreational users. In the winter, the harbor records 350 parked in boat slips, and in summer more than 1,000 parked in the harbor. Another 150 boats will be launched from the launch ramp each weekend throughout the summer.
Other traffic includes set-netters, seiners, longliners and gill netters of Kachemak Bay.
Since Kachemak Bay is designated a “safe anchorage” for tankers and other large vessels resting en route up Cook Inlet, the Bay sees a fair number of that traffic as well. However, since they do not conduct business at the dock, those numbers are not recorded.
At the Anchorage Port, Deputy Port Director Stephen Ribuffo said most of the traffic coming to Anchorage does pass by Kachemak Bay. That traffic includes aviation fuel barged from the West Coast, any refined fuel from Valdez and the freight barges from Delta Wester, Crowley, K-Sea, Totem Ocean Express and Horizon Lines.
Yet all these vessels have been operating, many for decades, within the constraints set by areas already designated sensitive habitat, Lord said. Still, there is a lot unknown about much of Cook Inlet, since studies are long overdue in that vast body about its critical habitat.
“The concern is there is a lot of development activity proposed (in Upper Cook Inlet): The Anchorage Port, the Knik Arm Bridge, the Chuitna coal project, municipal waste going in the inlet. A lot of these will involve consultation with NMFS,” Lord said. “Personally, I don’t believe that’s unreasonable. It won’t be a problem for any reasonable development activity.”
Address comments regarding the proposal to Kaja Brix, Assistant Regional Administrator, Protected Resources, Alaska Region, with NMFS attention to Ellen Sebastian. Comments may be faxed to 586-7557 or by mail, 709 W. 9th Street Room 420A, Juneau, Alaska, 99802-1668. For comments on the Web site, got to http://www.regulations.gov
All comments will be posted to this site. Do not submit confidential comments, and names must be signed with testimony.

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Posted by Newsroom on Dec 9th, 2009 and filed under More News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.