St. Petersburg, Florida, to discuss possible means for 

 identifying and determining how best to obtain needed infor- 

 mation. Representatives of the Marine Mammal Commission, the 

 Minerals Management Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, 

 and the National Marine Fisheries Service participated in the 

 meeting. Participants agreed that it would be desirable to 

 hold a workshop, involving scientists and others with expertise 

 and interest in marine mammals and sea turtles in the Gulf of 

 Mexico. The purpose of the workshop is to: identify critical 

 information needs; describe the research that would be required 

 to obtain needed information; and estimate the time, money, 

 and other resources that would be required to do the described 

 research. At the end of the year, plans for the workshop, 

 scheduled to be held in August 1989, were being finalized. 



Small Take Exemption 



Under section 101(a) (5) of the Marine Mammal Protection 

 Act, as amended, U.S. citizens engaged in activities other 

 than commercial fishing may, under certain conditions, be 

 authorized to incidentally take small numbers of marine mammals. 

 On 16 February 1988, six oil and gas exploration companies 

 jointly petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service for 

 permission to take small numbers of bowhead and gray whales 

 incidental to oil and gas exploration activities in the Beaufort 

 and Chukchi Seas adjacent to the coast of Alaska. The Commis- 

 sion, in consultation with its Committee of Scientific Advisors, 

 reviewed the petition and, by letter of 13 July 1988, forwarded 

 its comments to the National Marine Fisheries Service. 



In its letter, the Commission concurred with the 

 petitioners' statement that it is reasonable to assume that 

 noise and disturbance from exploration activities likely 

 would have negligible effects on bowhead and gray whale survival 

 and productivity, and no more than temporary, localized effects 

 on the availability of whales to Native subsistence hunters. 

 However, the Commission questioned other conclusions and 

 assumptions contained in the petition. Specifically, it 

 questioned whether the probability of an oil spill occurring 

 and contacting whales or important whale habitats was 

 sufficiently small that the possible impacts of oil spills 

 need not be considered, particularly since there is no proven 

 technology for dealing with an oil spill under such 

 circumstances. The Commission further noted that, while it 

 believed it was reasonable to assume that noise and disturbance 

 from exploration activities are likely to have negligible 

 effects on the survival and productivity of gray whales and 

 bowhead whales, this does not mean that noise and disturbance 

 from development and production activities would also have 

 negligible effects. 



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