11/10/2006: "Guest Editorial"

Impacts Of Whale-Watching Boats
By Mark Anderson

In a letter written by San Juan Island whale watch operator Bill Carli, he said two things which operators have been saying for ten years.

Here is the first: "There is no scientific evidence that whale-watching boats have a negative impact on the whales."

Knowing even the possibility that boats harm whales, how could any whale watch operator not take the personal responsibility to learn the science on this issue? Indeed, every paper ever published on the question shows only negative impacts of boats on whales.

(continued from front)
I am here listing a fraction of the recent scientific papers showing direct negative impacts of boats on whales:

Lusseau, D. 2004. The hidden cost of tourism: detecting long-term effects of tourism using behavioral information. Ecology and Society 9(1): 2. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art2/

Concurrent Technologies Corporation, Dec. 2005 Underwater Acoustic Habitat Technical Memorandum. Contract submitted to NOAA

Williams, R, D. Lusseau and P.S. Hammond 2006. Estimating relative energetic costs of human disturbance to killer whales (Orcinus orca). Biol. Cons. 133:301-311

Williams, R, and E. Ashe 2006. Northern Resident killer whale responses to vessels varied with number of boats. NOAA Fisheries Contract.

Bain, D.E., R. Williams and D. Lusseau 2006. Effects of vessels on behavior of southern resident killer whales (Orcinus spp.) NMFS Contract Report.

Bejder, L. et. al. 2006. Decline in relatiave abundance of bottlenose dolphins exposed to long-term disturbance. Cons. Biol.

We are posting a bibliography of over 20 papers in addition to these, on our site, all showing negative impacts of boats on whales.

Here is the second most-common whale watch operator statement: "If I felt I was causing any stress or in any way being harmful to the orcas, I would quit doing whale watching tours today."

I am challenging Bill, and his fellow operators, to be true to their word. Now you have the proof. Do you have the courage of your convictions? The science is clear: boats cause whales to swim further and faster, raising their metabolic rates (stress), requiring more food, impairing their sonar, while simultaneously making catching food much more difficult. Boats are the single covariant, along with lowered fish count, that correlates with increased orca death rates. One orca has been killed, and one injured, from direct boat strikes.

In times of low Chinook count, boat harassment doesn't just harm whales, it kills them.

Don't blame toxins.

Our whales are dying with ribs showing. Toxins don't cause adult whales to starve; boat harassment, linked with low fish count, does. Toxins cause low sperm count, as another whale watcher recently pointed out; this is the only problem our whales don't seem to have, since we have plenty of babies. As Doug McMaster, then head of the NMFS Marine Mammal Laboratory, said to operators years ago: "this population decline is not caused by toxins."

Will you now quit? Others have, and with honor.

I hope that every whale watch operator will consider it his or her personal responsibility to read the science on this question, and to make a personal decision about the ethics of continuing something with proven negative impact on the orca.

And for those of you who will not stop, for whatever reasons; please consider an organized reduction in days, and times of day. This isn't about proving your lobbying power: it's about losing our local whales.

I hope that you, Bill, and your co-operators will do the right thing. It's time.

(Mark Anderson is the Chairman of the Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance, and was a co-founder and the creator of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor. His day job is the CEO of Strategic News Service® (SNS) and its consulting practice, Technology Alliance Partners (TAP), and is also the chairman of the Future in Review (FiRe) Conferences.)