38 



the animals to leave, you know, that they were not going to inter- 

 fere with their movements. 



I don't want to get into the specific configuration of the area, but 

 basically the dolphins were trying to — it seemed that the dolphins 

 were trying to swim south and the only way to get out was to swim 

 north and there was reason to believe that they were not able to 

 get out. 



The reason I mention it is because the Marine Mammal Strand- 

 ing Center, well actually what happened is that the ice froze again 

 and we don't really know what happened to the dolphins, whether 

 they died or they managed to swim out or whatever. But it caused 

 a lot of concern over I guess the bureaucracy of getting this permis- 

 sion from NMFS, which may have been a permit or not and may 

 have related to what Mr. Reynolds said, I am not sure. But it cer- 

 tainly sounds like it to me. 



What the locals are saying, what Mr. Schoelkopf and the Marine 

 Mammal Stranding Center is saying is that they would really like 

 the policy changed so that more input could come from local people, 

 those who are on the scene at the time, because they felt very 

 strongly that these animals were in danger and that it was proper, 

 appropriate action to take them out and they felt that they were 

 hindered by NMFS's policy. 



What I would like to do with the permission of the Chairman is 

 to — I know we have already sent some letters on this, but perhaps 

 give you more details about it, but I guess I wanted to ask either 

 Mr. Reynolds or Dr. Tyack or whoever to respond to this and 

 whether this actually relates to the permit concerns that you raised 

 in your testimony. 



Dr. Reynolds. I will take a stab at it first. Before I make some 

 general comments, I would note that I am not familiar with the 

 specifics of the situation you described, but the problem is that 

 there are instances where fast action is needed in order to preserve 

 individual animals or populations or potentially species. Right now, 

 there is no mechanism now to get around the 30-day comment pe- 

 riod. And we would agree with you and recommend that procedures 

 be changed to allow emergency responses to this sort of situation. 



There have been other situations where lack of ability to respond 

 quickly has been a problem, and I will give you one example. Back 

 in the early eighties there was a die off of monk seals on Laysan 

 Island. Hawaiian monk seals are an endangered species. At that 

 time, there were no biomedical data, no clinical data available on 

 monk seals, and so there was an attempt to get a permit quickly 

 or to waive the permitting process in order to sacrifice an animal 

 to get normal blood values so you could assess what is pathological. 

 This would allow you to start to make a determination on why 

 members of this endangered species were dying off. And it wasn't 

 possible to do that. 



And so, again, without knowing the specifics of your situation, I 

 would say that it might fall into this category. I would be inter- 

 ested in learning more about it, but clearly there are times when 

 the health of animals is in jeopardy and it would nice to be able 

 to act very quickly. 



Mr. Pallone. Well, perhaps what I could do, with the permission 

 of the Chairman, is send you some information on it and perhaps 



