Chapter VI 



ACTIVITIES RELATED TO MARINE MAMMALS 



IN THE ARCTIC 



More than a dozen species of marine mammals 

 inhabit the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas, either 

 seasonally or throughout the year. They include 

 bowhead and beluga whales, ringed, ribbon, bearded, 

 and spotted seals, polar bears and walruses. Each of 

 these species has been an important component of the 

 culture and subsistence of Arctic Natives for thou- 

 sands of years. The ranges of most marine mammals 

 occurring in the Arctic include the high seas and areas 

 under the jurisdiction of more than one country. 

 Consequently, effective conservation of these species 

 and their habitats require cooperative action by the 

 range states. 



Congress recognized the importance of marine 

 mammals to coastal Alaska Natives when it enacted 

 the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. Section 

 102 of the Act exempts coastal Alaska Natives from 

 the Act's provisions governing the taking of marine 

 mammals when the taking is not wasteful and is done 

 for subsistence purposes or for purposes of creating 

 and selling authentic Native articles of handicraft and 

 clothing. Section 119, added to the Act in 1994, 

 gives the Secretaries of Commerce and the Interior 

 explicit authority to enter into co-management agree- 

 ments with Alaska Native organizations. 



Bowhead whales, polar bears, walruses, and other 

 Arctic marine mammals have been subjected to 

 commercial as well as subsistence hunting, mostly in 

 the past 100 years. Commercial hunting was largely 

 unregulated and, because market demand generally 

 was greater than the annual replacement level, led 

 inevitably to overexploitation and depletion of the 

 stocks. Both the marine mammal stocks and the 

 Native Arctic residents who depended on them for 

 food, clothing, and other necessities were affected. 



The consequences of unregulated or poorly regulat- 

 ed commercial and subsistence hunting have been 

 widely recognized. As noted elsewhere in this report, 

 commercial hunting of bowhead whales has been 

 prohibited by the International Whaling Commission 

 (IWC), and Alaska Natives have formed the Alaska 

 Eskimo Whaling Commission, which works coopera- 

 tively with the IWC and U.S. Federal and state 

 agencies to ensure that Native subsistence and cultural 

 needs are met without jeopardizing recovery of the 

 western Arctic bowhead stock. Also as noted else- 

 where in this report, a number of government-to- 

 government and Native-to-Native agreements have 

 been or are being concluded to cooperatively manage 

 populations of polar bears and other marine mammals 

 shared with other countries. The possible adverse 

 effects of industrial development and pollution on the 

 Arctic environment and on resident peoples also have 

 been recognized. The following sections describe a 

 number of ongoing activities of particular importance 

 to the conservation of marine mammals and their 

 habitats in the Arctic. 



Arctic Environmental 

 Protection Strategy 



In June 1991 the eight Arctic countries — Canada, 

 Denmark (for Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, 

 the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States 

 — adopted the Arctic Environmental Protection 

 Strategy. The goals of the strategy are to preserve the 

 environmental quality and natural resources of the 

 Arctic, reduce pollution and monitor environmental 

 conditions, and accommodate the traditional cultural 

 and subsistence needs, values, and practices of indige- 

 nous peoples, insofar as they relate to the environment 

 and natural resources of the Arctic. 



139 



