For troubled orcas, relief may be near

They've been shot at and starved and have had to suck up terrible contaminants in their mothers' milk. By now, orca whales are at risk of extinction, with the southern resident population of Puget Sound numbering a mere 87 animals.

While the days of fishermen plinking away at the mammals are over, orcas still face a barrage of a different sort: tourists and their cameras, aboard some 90 commercial whale-watching boats working Puget Sound in the summertime — more than one for every orca.

But orcas may be closer to getting some relief on several different fronts.

Today, the National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to issue a final recovery plan for orcas, including plans to study vessel traffic and noise as risk factors, along with environmental contamination and shortage of their food supply.

In the meantime, the state Legislature is taking up two separate measures that would restrict whale-watching boats and impose a fine of up to $500 on violators as early as this summer.

"This is a fairly modest proposal," said Rep. Dave Quall, D-Mount Vernon, who sponsored one of the bills. "We are just trying to buy some time until the feds come up with their protection plan."

Possible federal rules

Whale-watching is big business, with a half-million visitors cruising Puget Sound to see orcas every summer, said Kari Koski of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, San Juan County.

Bill Wright, who runs San Juan Safaris out of Friday Harbor, said his company alone hosts about 6,000 people from around the world.

"They are the icon," he said of the orcas.

Restricting whale-watching has been debated in the San Juans for years and voluntary limits have long been in effect. Last fall, the San Juan County Commission passed a local ordinance limiting boats to 100 yards from the orcas, except for legitimate research vessels and commercial fishermen. But the ordinance applies only to waters within county borders.

There are currently no federal standards on orca-watching distances, other than a broad prohibition against harassing marine mammals in general.

The federal recovery plan, required because the orcas were listed in 2005 as endangered, calls for more research on the impacts of vessels on the orcas, along with investigation of the roles that contamination and scarcity of food, especially chinook salmon, play in the orcas' decline.

"The public thinks a species is listed, now they are protected; they think now we've solved the problem when we have only started to define the work," said Brad Hanson, chief of orca research with NOAA fisheries in Seattle. "Now the real work starts."

The recovery plan could eventually lead to federal rules on whale-watching, including proximity limits and perhaps closures of some areas to whale-watching altogether.

But any such federal rules are at least two whale-watching seasons away.

So in Olympia this winter, the two bills are intended to take the spirit of the San Juan ordinance statewide.

Quall's bill, House Bill 2514, is identical to the San Juan ordinance; it would allow police to hand out $500 fines. Senate Bill 6395 is its companion bill across the rotunda.

Quall's district includes the San Juans, the home base of the whale-watching industry, and his primary target is egregious violators. Boaters who find themselves in the path of oncoming whales, or who can't get out of the orcas' way through no fault of their own, wouldn't be penalized, he said.

Effects unclear

Just how much of a problem whale-watching and other vessel traffic poses for orcas is yet to be understood, Hanson said. Orcas use a kind of underwater sonar to find prey and communicate. Noisy waters might interfere with their ability to find food and go about their lives.

"We are concerned about potential adverse effects to the population, but we don't know yet," Hanson said.

David Bain, a biologist now with Global Research and Rescue, a Seattle nonprofit, studied boat traffic in the San Juans from 2003 to 2005 for the NOAA, and noted that about a quarter of the vessels got closer than 100 yards from the orcas. That added up to more than four hours a day that the orcas were in close company with boats.

"It gets to be a very long day for the whales," Bain said.

But Ken Balcomb, who heads the Center for Whale Research from his home on San Juan Island, cautions that simply restricting whale-watching won't help the orca population recover. Instead, he said, the focus should be on banning toxic chemicals, limiting growth and development and rebuilding salmon runs.

Whale-watch restrictions are "just an easy thing to do that makes somebody look like they are doing something to save the whales," Balcomb said. "And it's going to be painfully difficult to enforce."

Wright, the whale-watching captain, says he would welcome a 100-yard law. Conservation-minded commercial operators have been voluntarily observing that for years, he said.

He agrees with Quall. The real targets, Wright said, are boaters who deliberately harass the whales.

"We are trying to find a way to go after the jerks, not the people who get it."

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