Is The Marine Mammal Act About To Be Gutted?

Fifty-four years ago, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was signed into law by none other than the President Richard M. Nixon administration in order to give salvation to our blubbery waterborn cousins. It was a time when they desperately needed relief from myriad overexploitations and injustices. It was also a time when natural ecosystems were so out of whack, it looked like the entire natural food chain might collapse.

Too few or too many of any sort of critter can cause a real disruption beyond human comprehension, humanity has continued to learn. The potential domino effects are many and, in many circumstances, entirely unpredictable.

“The Marine Mammal Protection Act has been considered a lodestar for marine conservation globally since its passage,” Michael Jasney, Director of Marine Mammals at the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), said in a press release earlier this winter. “It’s a remarkable piece of legislation that was ahead of its time in so many ways.”

Fast forward half a century, and we have more marine mammals along our coastlines than anyone in old Tricky Dick’s cabinet probably could have anticipated. They’re clogging up shipping lanes, throwing themselves in front of tankers, and entangling themselves in precious fishing equipment. They’re causing economic disruptions that upset the money people and, cuteness notwithstanding, they’ve now found themselves in the crosshairs.

While the United States’ public is so preoccupied with any number of outrages at this given moment, Congressman Nick Begich III—of Alaska, of all places—has proposed protection rollbacks on one of the very pillars of his goodly state’s economy. How many tourists spend their hard-earned John Wayne dollars just for a glimpse of a seal, a cetacean, a walrus? The last National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries department estimate, from 2019, was something to the tune of more than 550,000, or one-quarter of Alaska’s 2.2 million summer visitors. That is no small pile of beans, and amounts to billions in revenue for the Land of the Midnight Sun.

But then, what with the oil and gas industry making up a whopping 80-plus-percent of the Last Frontier’s economy, who gives a hoot about the blubbery things, right? If only we could afford to be so shortsighted (and unconscionable). We’ll spare you the biology lesson, but making way for our closest aquatic relatives and the ocean’s larger beasts is essential to making the world go round, and it’s a shame that a congressman—an Alaskan congressman—at that, should think he can afford to be so shortsighted in this day and age. But lo, here we are. 

For good measure, and for the sake of objective reporting (whatever that’s worth these days), Congressman Begich, III, is not, as hardly anyone ever is, entirely wrong in his initial proposal of “A Bill: To amend the Marine Mammal Protection act of 1972.”

Environmental groups have long kvetched over certain marine mammal overpopulations—as a result of other overexploitations, such as those of top-tier predators like us surfers’ preferred antagonists, sharks, but that’s (sort of) another matter. Where certain marine mammal populations, such as those of seals in the Pacific Northwest, run unchecked, other efforts to restore other populations (e.g., salmon) are hindered.

But according to the NRDC’s press release, Congressman Begich, III’s reauthorization bill “touches on nearly every major provision that makes the MMPA such an effective law. One of the most important elements in jeopardy is its ‘incidental take’ provision.”

This provision requires MMPA (government) permits for the use of high-powered airguns to probe for oil within the ocean floor, a practice that has been proven time and again to wreak havoc on marine mammals, among countless other voiceless critters. Under this law, wildlife agencies are also able to recommend measures that achieve “the least practicable adverse impact” on marine mammals. This involves avoiding certain breeding grounds during mating season and using advanced technologies for minimal noise. The reauthorization bill, the NRDC says, “would prevent wildlife agencies from changing the timing, location, or design of industrial activities in any way.”

Also included in the bill’s draft are deft considerations for interests of indigenous Tribes and the fishing industry, swinging for the bleachers, no doubt, in an attempt to veil the real and obvious white whale in the room: the fossil fuel industry.

It’s a whole stinking rotten mess, and in the end, the least of whom to be blamed are the poor, if also, and however rightfully, currently outraged and raging marine mammals.

If passed, the bill would no doubt aid in the Trump administration’s wider efforts to open up offshore oil and gas exploration along its coastlines, allow commercial fishing to operate with lax considerations for marine mammal life, and, statistically speaking, increase the odds of more disasters like the 2011 BP disaster in the Gulf.

“There is plenty of pushback from the conservation community, from Tribal authorities, from the scientific community, from aquariums,” said Jasny.

Is there good news here? Well, amidst all the doom and gloom of its introduction, the bill still has to pass the House and Senate, those very foundations still standing for our democracy.