26 



the difference, and if it is a problem, can you suggest some alterna- 

 tives? 



Ms. Young. Carrying capacity is always a difficult issue in gen- 

 eral. It is debated hotly with terrestrial mammals; for example, 

 deer. Trying to determine what constitutes the carrying capacity is 

 very difficult even with land mammals where you can make good 

 assessments of habitat effects and can get accurate population 

 census and know a lot about reproductive rates. In the marine en- 

 vironment, determining carrying capacity is very difficult, in gen- 

 eral, because we don't know a lot of the interactions in the environ- 

 ment. It is more difficult to census and animals, and we know 

 much less about reproductive habits because of the difficult envi- 

 ronment. 



So trying to assess current carrying capacity is extremely diffi- 

 cult, but what we do know is that habitat is degraded, for the most 

 part, over what it was quite sometime ago, and there are a number 

 of cases where you can see very clearly demonstrated the problem 

 with using current carrying capacity. For example, the northern 

 right whale which is one of the most critically endangered of the 

 large whales — with a population of less than 500 individuals re- 

 maining. That population has not shown any significant increase in 

 50 years despite the lack of any directed take of the animals. 



Generally it is thought to be an indication of a stable population, 

 if you don't see any increase. With right whales you see a popula- 

 tion fluctuating around a mean, and so you could make the case 

 that right whales are at current carrying capacity because we are 

 not seeing any increase. Yet, no serious scientist would ever make 

 that claim because we know that the oceans once held thousands of 

 them. Relying on current carrying capacity may mean accepting 

 levels of marine mammals that are considerably lower than anyone 

 would presume to be possible. Historic carrying capacity is difficult 

 to assess because there hasn't always been a directed fishery. But, 

 in any case, we would hope that historic carrying capacity would 

 be used wherever possible to try to make those determinations. 



Mr. Studds. Thank you very much. The gentleman from Califor- 

 nia. 



Mr. Hamburg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to be fairly 

 parochial here. I am not— far from an expert on the Marine 

 Mammal Protection Act, but there are a couple of issues that are 

 very hot in my district. I have the northern third of the California 

 coast. There are a couple of issues that have come to my attention, 

 and I would just like to ask members of the panel to address them. 



I want to say before I ask those questions that I consider myself 

 someone who is very sensitive to the right of all species to survive 

 and thrive. I do not, you know — killing species of any kind from 

 the smallest critters to the greatest is something that I think we 

 need to avoid at nearly all costs. But we do have problems on the 

 north coast of California with this very tricky word of balance. 

 Usually the way I approach these issues of environmental balance 

 is that we are way out of balance currently, and we need to bring 

 things more back into balance, and we need to take appropriate 

 steps to do so. 



But I just want to throw out a couple of things that are happen- 

 ing where I live and just see how you respond to them. The first 



