NEAH BAY — The federal government’s announcement this week that it is scrapping a 7-year-old draft environmental study on the impact of Makah tribal whaling and will write a new impact statement in light of “substantial new scientific information” was a letdown for tribal Chairman Micah McCarty.
But it wasn’t surprising, he said Thursday.
“It’s disappointing,” McCarty said.
“We pretty much knew what the options were and weren’t surprised,” he said.
“Timelines are pretty much dictated by how much the [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] can navigate all this,” McCarty added.
Tribal whalers last legally killed a whale in 1999.
In 2000, court cases put the hunts on hold indefinitely.
“I don’t know how many times we’ve said, ‘maybe next year, maybe the next 18 months,’” McCarty said.
NOAA announced Monday that the draft environmental study would be terminated so new information could be incorporated.
The new information is that the gray whales the tribe wants to hunt off the Washington coast may need to be managed separately from the overall population of about 20,000 gray whales that migrate up and down the West Coast.
That’s based on a study by Canadian scientists Tim Frasier and Jim Darling that says a separate, genetically distinct Pacific Coast Feeding Group of about 200 whales regularly feeds in areas that include waters between northern California and southeastern Alaska during the summer and fall, NOAA spokesman Brian Gorman said Friday.
Additions also will include information from a separate, ongoing NOAA review of gray whale behavior that was prompted by the Canadian study and will be published in early fall, Gorman said.
“The possibility of taking a PCFG whale cannot be eliminated,” the NOAA study said, adding that the Makah tribe has proposed whaling restrictions “that are designed to reduce the probability of killing a PCFG whale.”
A preliminary 2011 report on the NOAA study “verifies [the Canadian study] with a separate set of samples,” research biologist John Calambokidis, who participated in the NOAA study, said Thursday.
The whaling restrictions include one of four alternatives presented in the federal government’s “notice to terminate” the draft study dealing with the Makah hunting whales 3 miles off the coast, Calambokidis said.
Darling said he has “certainly seen local whales 3 miles offshore” but that the new environmental study could provide a firm determination on that issue.
The tribe also proposes to hunt whales from Dec. 1 through May 30, avoiding the summer, when Pacific Coast Feeding Group whales predominate, according to the federal notice terminating the draft environmental impact statement.
Makah whaling opponent Margaret Owens of Joyce said Pacific Coast Feeding Group whales, which she calls “resident” whales, should be managed — and protected — as a distinct group that includes mothers and their calves that are genetically driven to feed regularly off the coast.
“We are hopeful in the end that science will prevail and it will be determined that . . . the resident whales can’t sustain any losses and neither can the western grays, who are mingled with the migrating group,” she said.
“We pretty much hope the cards are stacked against hunting gray whales.”
McCarty said “there is a degree of validity” to the Canadian study, which took DNA samples from gray whales.
“I’m not saying it’s incorrect, but if the intent is chasing down mother-calf pairs to try to trace their mitochondrial DNA, yes, you are going to find something,” he said.
“I don’t necessarily think that makes them a genetically distinct population in the overall population,” McCarty said.
“In the overall picture, they are still part of the overall population.”
McCarty said the tribe has acknowledged the possibility of “genetic groupings” in its court-ordered 2005 waiver request for a limited suspension of a whaling moratorium imposed under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
“There are still a lot of unknowns,” McCarty said.
“We support better understanding of this as responsible managers.”
But the tribe may have to apply for a new waiver depending on the review of the new scientific information, Gorman said.
A 2011 survey of Makah tribal members, which McCarty said showed “an even stronger resolve in the community” to continue efforts to hunt whales, will be presented to the International Whaling Commission as part of the tribe’s quota request to hunt up to 20 gray whales in any five-year period with a maximum of five whales annually, McCarty said.
The International Whaling commission already has concluded that a separate population of Pacific Coast Feeding Group whales is “plausible,” Gorman said.
The tribe wants to exercise its right to hunt whales under the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.
McCarty, in his third year as tribal chairman and now 41, was in his 20s when the first whale hunt was conducted, he said.
“I feel like I’ll be in good enough shape to participate in the hunt by the time we do it,” he said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.