In March, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) sought public comment on the Makah Tribe’s request for a permit under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to hunt gray whales off the Washington coast. This is the final step in the government’s decades-long effort to allow the Tribe to resume whaling after nearly a hundred-year hiatus. Other than a single gray whale killed in 1999 (before litigation stopped a continuation of the hunt) and another killed illegally in 2007, the Makah Tribe had not hunted gray whales since 1927. While AWI respects the Tribe’s traditions, it submitted comments to NMFS opposing permit issuance due to biological, legal, and ethical concerns over the proposed hunt.
Only weeks after the comments were submitted, NMFS revealed that Eastern North Pacific (ENP) gray whale numbers had plummeted to an estimated 12,950 animals. This is the lowest count since the early 1970s—a time when gray whales were listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—and less than half the population’s estimated high of 27,430 animals in 2016. To make matters worse, NMFS estimates that only 85 calves were born during this year’s calving season, not nearly enough to replace the almost 130 individuals reported to have stranded this year from Mexico to Alaska, as well as any unreported strandings and many more (likely thousands) who died and sank undetected rather than wash ashore.
According to scientists, including those from the federal government, this precipitous decline is primarily a consequence of ocean warming in the Arctic, which is causing an ecological paradigm shift and diminishing gray whale food supplies. The Arctic marine ecosystem has long been driven by benthic organisms (marine species that live on the seafloor). Enormous quantities of food, including under-ice algae, would sink to the seafloor to nourish these organisms that provided a food source for gray whales and other marine species. Climate change, however, is diminishing the extent of sea ice, and the warming waters are allowing more southerly species, including fish, to expand their ranges north.
These fluctuations result in more of the food that would normally sustain the benthic organisms being consumed before reaching the seafloor. Consequently, the abundance and composition of benthic organisms (including amphipods—calorically rich crustaceans that are a dietary staple for gray whales) has changed, forcing gray whales to expand their range in search of food. If they can’t find sufficient prey, or if the prey is inadequate to meet their biological needs, their physical condition declines, which diminishes their odds of successful reproduction and increases their risk of dying during the lengthy annual migration to Mexico. Disconcertingly, scientists have determined that rising water temperatures and retreating sea ice will likely continue to diminish Arctic benthic productivity, to the enduring detriment of gray whales.
The Makah Tribe’s requested hunt during the summer and fall (July through October, every other year) would primarily target Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales—whales who spend their summers feeding in nearshore waters from Northern California to British Columbia instead of migrating to the Arctic. In 2022, NMFS estimated that only 202 PCFG gray whales existed. In contrast to its up-to-date estimate documenting the staggering decline in ENP gray whales, however, NMFS has not published a more recent PCFG population estimate. The government’s rules for implementing the hunt require it to obtain an updated PCFG abundance estimate before it can authorize a hunt; if the estimate is fewer than 192 whales then, by regulation, a hunt cannot be allowed.
Unfortunately, despite compelling evidence demonstrating that PCFG gray whales should be designated as a separate management stock under the MMPA, NMFS continues to consider them part of the larger ENP population. In 2013, NMFS scientists reported that they were nearly equally split on whether to designate PCFG gray whales as a separate management stock and made clear that such a designation could be made in the future. Since then, a bevy of peer-reviewed studies have been published revealing that PCFG gray whales meet the government’s own criteria to be designated as a separate stock, yet NMFS continues to reject reconsideration of the PCFG stock structure.
These recent studies make clear that PCFG whales are morphologically, behaviorally, and genetically distinct from ENP gray whales. Because unique behaviors are passed from mothers to calves, removing whales from this population could potentially reduce the cultural memory of these feeding grounds and behaviors, making localized extirpation more likely and consequential. Indeed, should ENP gray whale numbers continue to decline as climate change wreaks havoc in their Arctic habitat, the importance of protecting PCFG gray whales will only increase.
Although unlikely, even critically endangered Western North Pacific (WNP) gray whales, who spend most of the year in Russian waters and number only an estimated 290 animals, could be adversely impacted if any migrate and remain in the permitted hunt area during the hunting season. All three populations, which are outwardly indistinguishable, are also threatened by ocean contaminants, anthropogenic noise, vessel strikes, and fishing gear entanglement throughout their range. ENP gray whales who migrate to Russian waters in the summer are also hunted by aboriginal subsistence whalers from Chukotka.
In addition to these concerns, whaling is inherently cruel; chasing, harpooning, and shooting a 30- to 40-ton swimming gray whale from a moving vessel—while at the mercy of ocean waves and currents—in a manner that results in a quick kill is virtually impossible. The Makah Tribe’s proposed hunting methods—spearing a whale with a traditional harpoon followed by one or more shots from a large-caliber rifle—is not humane. The whale killed in 1999 took eight minutes to die, far from satisfying the MMPA’s definition of “humane,” which requires the method to involve “the least possible degree of pain and suffering practicable to the mammal involved.” Independent of the collapsing ENP gray whale numbers, the cruelty inherent to the Tribe’s proposed hunting method is sufficient grounds for NMFS to deny the requested permit.
For decades, gray whales have been celebrated as a poster species for the effectiveness of the protections afforded by the ESA and the MMPA. Now, with climate change devastating their Arctic feeding grounds, the ENP population is in free fall. With the future of gray whales so uncertain and the risks to their survival only worsening, it is time to redouble protections for this species.