The National Park Service asked the Commission to 

 convene a second workshop, following the 1981 field 

 season, to review the work just completed and recommend 

 future actions. The Commission did so on 20-21 December 

 1981 in Seattle, Washington, and preliminary results are 

 discussed in the Commission's Annual Report for 1981. The 

 participants concluded, among other things, that additional 

 studies would probably be required to meet management 

 needs and they recommended that the program be continued 

 and, if possible, expanded in 1982. It was recognized 

 that lack of adequate funding as well as insufficient time 

 to plan and coordinate research had limited the success of 

 the 1981 field research. 



In 1982, the National Park Service again transferred 

 funds to the National Marine Fisheries Service to continue 

 research on the relationship between whales and prey and 

 whales and boats in Glacier Bay and nearby waters. The 

 scope of work called for studies of prey resources to 

 identify and quantify the principal prey species in 

 humpback whale feeding areas and to measure the changes in 

 abundance and distribution of prey types during the season. 

 It also called for studies on behavior to determine whale 

 response to vessels of different types and sizes which were 

 traveling at different speeds. A major component of 

 this work was the radio-tagging and tracking of individual 

 whales to detect stress caused by vessels. 



It was apparent, however, that existing funds were 

 insufficient to provide an adequate number of radio-tags 

 to tag the optimum number of humpback whales. Thus, on 

 12 July 1982, the Commission transferred funds to the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service to provide an adequate 

 number of tags to increase the probability of the success 

 of both the tagging program and the entire research program. 



At the end of 1982, the possibility of convening a 

 third interagency workshop to review research and management 

 activities concerning humpback whales in Alaska waters was 

 under consideration. While analyses of data from the 1982 

 field program probably will not be completed for several 

 months, a meeting might be useful for determining whether 

 the 1982 research results likely will indicate or suggest 

 further management actions that could or should be taken to 

 protect humpback whales, and what additional research and 

 monitoring programs, if any, likely will be necessary to 

 assess and detect the possible adverse effects of vessel 

 and other human activities on humpback whales in Glacier 

 Bay. 



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