and JENNY L. ATKINSON
The endangered Southern Resident orca whales need our help. They need less pollution and many more salmon to eat and they need fewer boats disturbing them and making underwater noise.
For more than 30 years, The Whale Museum has been observing the Southern Residents and has operated the Soundwatch “on-the-water-boater-education” program for nearly 20 years. Soundwatch has worked with the whale-watch industry and the U.S. and Canadian governments to collaboratively develop “Be Whale Wise Guidelines” (www.bewhalewise.org). Some of these guidelines have already become Washington state law. Now, the federal government is seeking to create federal vessel regulations, based in part on these industry supported guidelines.
Monitoring research by Soundwatch illustrates that voluntary guidelines don’t work and that the 2008 Washington state vessel regulation also is not working, especially when applied to private boaters. Although implementation of the state law did tend to increase the average distance between whales and boats, too many incidents still occur. (Of the 2,572 likely violations observed in 2009 by Soundwatch, 72 percent were committed by private boaters, 8 percent by Canadian operators, 4 percent by U.S. commercial operators, 4 percent by kayaks and the remaining percentages by aircraft, marine fishery vessels, research boats, etc. Visit www.whalemuseum.org/programs/soundwatch/vesselincidents.html).
The Whale Museum is keenly aware that enforcement of the current Washington vessel law has been woefully inadequate. While new federal regulations will not go into effect next summer we are encouraged that the Coast Guard has agreed to our request to increase their enforcement presence on the water during the peak whale watching season.
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