519 



STATEMENT OF TOM GARRETT, WILDLIFE CONSULTANT, FRIENDS 



OF THE EARTH 



Mr. Garrett. Mr. Chairman, I am Tom Garrett, wildlife consultant 

 for Friends of the Earth. I apj^reciate this opportunity to testify. 



Friends of the Earth strong'ly endorses the basic provisions of the 

 Ocean Mammal Protection Act. We wish to commend Representative 

 Pryor for amending section III of the original act to contain an evi- 

 dent guarantee that pelagic sealing will not be resimied. 



It is painfully obvious to any of us \^'!ho have observed the tragic 

 destruction of the great whales, that the Japanese and Russians would 

 be very liable to decimate the Pribilof herds if not bound firmly by 

 treaty. 



We believe that a number of additional amendments are required. 



Any ocean mammal bill should contain pro^dsions for the funding of 

 a really comprehensive study of marine ecosystems, and the role of 

 marine mammals in these systems. Very little is really known of the 

 complex marine food webs, or any other aspect of marine ecology. 

 This should be acknowledged, and efforts made to improve the de- 

 ficiency. 



There is no merit in attemtping to apply the so-called lessons of 

 terrestrial wildlife management to the incomparably more complex 

 marine environment. Simplistic analogies based on such comparisons 

 cannot be taken seriously. 



The dramatic deterioration of the marine environment makes this 

 kind of study critically important. There is, for example, increasing 

 evidence that marine mammals are being ]X)isoned by toxic compounds 

 and heavy metals wthich are now permeating the marine environment. 



One case which first came to my attention last month concerns the 

 California sea lion. During the past several years, an increasing num- 

 ber of aborted fetuses have been observed on the channel island rook- 

 eries. At least 250 aborted fetuses have been observed on San Miguel 

 Island this year. 



Dan O'Dell has been conducting counts on San Nicolas Island for 

 several years. He reports that the number of aborted fetuses has in- 

 creased "from 139 in 1969, when the abortion problem first began to at- 

 tract attention, to an estimated 600 in 1970, and around 400 in 1971. 



There is no way of telling how many animals may have aborted at 

 sea, but tlie count of living pups on the rookery; 2,200 in 1970, and 

 about 3,500 this year from an estimated 8,000 females, indicates that a 

 good many may have aborted. 



Three scientists working for the naval midersea researdli and de- 

 velopment program, Delong, Gilmarten, and Simpson, have discov- 

 ered a correlation between abortion and poisoning by toxic compounds. 

 Their report is now in draft, form, and is as yet unavailable. However, 

 they have confirmed that the aborted fetuses and mothers have shown 

 a concentration of DDE, a metabolite of DDT, 81/2 times greater than 

 was present in a control sampling. They also report strikingly 'high 

 concentrations of PCB, a toxic phenol compound in the cases involv- 

 ing abortion, suggesting a possible synergistic effect. 



The analyses conducted have provided no evidence of involvement 

 by leptospirosis, or other viral or infections diseases. 



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