Death of whale was neither humane nor swift, Makahs report

A gray whale illegally killed by five members of the Makah tribe in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in September took nearly 10 hours to die because the hunters didn't know what they were doing and shot the animal in the wrong place, according to a new tribal report.

The report also says it took federal officials more than seven hours to authorize a tribal request to put the whale out of its misery.

The report was delivered Thursday to federal fisheries officials in an effort to clarify how and why the animal's death came so long after the rogue hunt. It reveals the hunt as a floating fiasco that broke every rule in the tribe's own whaling-management plans set out to ensure a quick, humane kill.

"This was very different from the 1999 hunt," the author of the report, tribal biologist Johnathan Scordino, said Thursday. In that hunt, which was legally authorized by the tribe and federal fisheries officials, the whale was killed with two shots from a high-powered rifle by a trained marksman. The animal was dead within eight minutes.

"A lot of people are concerned about the humanity of the hunt, how long the whale is going to suffer," Scordino said in an interview. "The tribe, in its management plan, went to great extent to ensure little suffering. This hunt [in September] was not conducted in an approved manner, and because of that, and the outside influence of others, this whale had a much longer time to death."

The National Marine Fisheries Service requested the report from the tribe to help an analysis being done for an environmental-impact statement that would be needed to approve any future legal whale hunts by the tribe.

The Sept. 8 hunt was done without a permit from either the tribe or the fisheries service. The five men — Wayne Johnson, Billy Secord, Frankie Gonzales, Andy Noel and Theron Parker — are charged in federal court in Tacoma with misdemeanor violations of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. They have pleaded not guilty, and defense attorneys have asked for a trial postponement until at least March.

In the meantime, the tribe has promised prosecution in tribal court. Charges had not been filed as of Thursday.

Trouble from start

According to Scordino's report, the hunt was in trouble from the outset.

The five men set out into the Strait from the downtown dock at Neah Bay and quickly found a gray whale. They harpooned the animal four times and shot it 16 times.

They had taken with them the right gun for the job: a .577-caliber rifle, the same gun that had been powerful enough to quickly kill the whale legally in 1999. But the gun was misfired and wound up overboard.

The men also had a Weatherby .460 Magnum rifle and a shotgun aboard. But the .460 did not have the power to kill the whale quickly unless fired directly at the brain stem. The untrained marksmen shot at the wrong part of the whale's head and didn't hit its brain stem. They also may have used the wrong ammunition.

At 10:44 a.m., the whalers were interrupted by the Coast Guard, which stopped the hunt and kept others at a distance from the whale. The whalers asked to go back to Neah Bay to get more ammunition to finish off the whale because it was suffering, Scordino wrote. But the Coast Guard would not allow it.

Tribal council member Micah McCarty said in an interview that he asked the local commander of the Coast Guard around 11:30 a.m. to allow the whale to be euthanized. The tribe also wanted to be able to utilize the carcass. The council also asked the fisheries service for permission to euthanize the animal, but amid the chaos of the unexpected events that Saturday morning, the tribe had to wait for an answer.

Scordino arrived on the scene at 3:06 p.m. and watched the whale until 7:08 p.m. "Throughout that entire time I knew it should be euthanized," Scordino said Thursday.

Instead of swimming normally, during the first 3 ½ hours of his observation the whale used its tail to swim only two or three times, Scordino reported. The whale used only its pectoral flippers to swim, trying to keep its head above water. Only the top of the whale's head and blow hole were visible, and it swam in a slow, counterclockwise pattern, with no apparent recognition of where it was.

At one point, the whale bumped into the boat it was tethered to but did not seem to respond, Scordino wrote. During the last half-hour of its life, the animal suddenly began swimming and diving. Scordino concluded that the whale had suddenly regained consciousness, after having been knocked out for hours.

Donna Darm, assistant regional administrator for protected resources at the fisheries service, said the agency moved as quickly as it could on the request to euthanize the whale. It took time for Scordino to get on the scene, and for the fisheries service to get Scordino in touch with a federal veterinarian. The two had to confer as to whether the whale was mortally wounded and should be euthanized. When they agreed that was the case, Darm needed to find someone capable of humanely killing the animal.

The Coast Guard declined, saying it didn't have weapons up to the task. That left the tribe. But tribal officials wanted permission in writing to kill the animal because, under a court order, the tribe needs a federal waiver to kill any whale.

Writing such a document and e-mailing it to the tribe took until 7:15 p.m., Darm said.

By then, the whale had died.

The fisheries service would not allow the tribe to harvest the whale, because it was not legally hunted. So Scordino cut the carcass free from the harpoon lines tethering it to the whalers' boat. The whale sank and was never recovered for a necropsy.

Scordino surmised the animal slowly bled to death.

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com