Diving in a Kelp Forest in Monterey Bay Recently I saw a Tubby 200-pound harbor seal following a fellow diver, nibbling on his flippers. The diver, a graduate student, used sponges to collect DNA samples from the ocean floor. Curious seals, he told me, can be a nuisance. When he cuts his sponges and places them in his collection network, they sometimes bite into it, pierce the bags and spoils his samples.
Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, closer than 50 meters to seals and dolphins are considered intimidation, but they are free to bother you, which only seems honest considering the centuries of deadly whaling and seal hunt that preceded a generation shift in how we look around the world around us.
The shift was in 1969, the year that a massive oil slick was the coastline of Santa Barbara and the Cuyahoga River, in Cleveland, on fire. Those two events helped to generate the first earth day in 1970, and the closure of the last whale station of America in 1971. The protection of the environment against pollution and against the loss of wilderness and animals in the wild quickly moved from a protesting issue to a social ethics as America’s Keystone environmental and signed, written around on the same time, was hired around on the same time, written on the same time, on the same time, on the same time, on the same time, on the same time, on the same time, on the same time. Richard Nixon.
Those laws include the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), The Clean Air Act (1970), The Clean Water Act (1972) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972), which goes beyond the endangered Species Act (1973) in the protection of all marine mammals in the vulner, killing in the citizen, killing in the citizen, killing in, killing, killing in, killing, killing in, killing, killing in the civilian, killing in the civilian, killing in the civilian, killing in the civilian, killing in the civilian, killing, in the civilian, killing, in the civilian, killing, in the civilian, killing, in the civilian, killing, in the vulse, in the citizen. And in the US citizens in the US and in the US citizens in the US and in American citizens and in the American citizens and in the American citizens.
All these “green” laws and more are attacked by the Trump administration, its congressminions and old company opponents of environmental protection, including the oil and gas industry. The unfair argument of the Republicans for weakening the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act is that the legislation has worked so well in rebuilding nature populations that it is time to detach rules for a better balance between nature and the human enterprise. When it comes to sea mammal populations, that starting point is wrong.
Republican Rep. Nick Begich van Alaska on July 22 during a subcommittee meeting of Natural Resources the draft legislation that would scale up the Marine Mammal Protection Act. His proposal would limit, among other things, the ability of the federal government to take action against ‘incidental Take’, killing whales, dolphins and seals due to sonic explosions of oil exploration, ship and boat attacks or by drowning as a chance catch (also known as Bycatch) in fisherman’s equipment. Complained This water mammal protection interferes with “essential projects such as energy development, port construction and even fishing activities.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), the ranking of the House Resources Committee, calls the legislation a “death sentence” for marine mammals.
It is true that the sea mammal law has been a success in many ways. Since the passage, no one -sea mammal has been extinct and some species have been repaired dramatically. The number of northern elephant seals migrated to Californian beaches to mate and Molt grew from 10,000 in 1972 to around 125,000 today. There were an estimated 11,000 gray whales for the west coast when the Navy became Mammal Protection Act Wet; By 2016, the population peaked at 27,000.
But not all species have thrive. Historically, there were around 20,000 North Atlantic right whales for the east coast. They were given their name because they were the “right” whales for harpoen – their bodies drove for easy recovery after they were killed. In 1972 they were due to an estimated 350 people. After more than half a century of federal legal protection, the population is estimated at 370. They continue to experience high mortality rates by ship attacks, entanglement in fishermen equipment and other causes, including sound pollution and greater effort to find prey in warming seas.
In addition to Florida, a combination of boat attacks and algae pollution threatens around 8,000-10,000 sea cows. The recovery of the population (of approximately 1,000 in 1979) Has been significant enough to move them from the list of endangered species in 2017, but since the beginning of this year alone, almost 500 died. Scientists would like to see them redesign again, but at least they are still covered by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
A 2022 Study in the Gulf of Mexico Discovered that in areas affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon -Olievlek 12 years earlier, the dolphin population had fallen by 45% and that it could take 35 years to recover. In the Northern Ice Sea for Alaska, Loss of sea ice Is threatening polar bears (they are considered marine mammals), Bowhead and Beluga whales, walruses, ringed seals and harp seals.
On the west coast, the number of gray whales – a success story of the marine mammal act and now a warning story – crashed by more than half to less than 13,000 in the past decade, according to a recent one Report by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa, the leading OcEeading office of the nation, is an endangered species in the Trump era). Falling prey, including small shrimp -like amphipodes, on the grounds of summer’s grounds of whales in the North Pole area, probably caused by warming water, is thought that they make an important contribution to their hunger and reduced birth rate.
The diving numbers of the whale are only one signal that only climate change makes maintaining the marine mammal action urgent. Widespread marine waves related to a warming ocean contribute to the loss of kelp forests on which they depend on otters and other marine mammals. Algal blooms from California, and for the first time ever, Alaska, supercharged by warmer waters and dietary pollution, leads to the death of thousands of dolphins and sea lions.
What the Trump administration and its anti -gulation, supporters of anti-environments protection acknowledges that the loss of marine mammals is an indicator for the falling health of our oceans and the natural world that we depend on and are part of it. This time saving the whales about saving ourselves.
David Helvarg is executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group. His next book, ‘Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperililed Future of Kelp,” is planned to be published in 2026.
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