Contributor: It’s time to save the whales again

Diving in a Varech forest in Monterey bay recently, I watched a seal of port of 200 pounds Tubby follow another diver, nibbling her fins. The diver, a graduate student, used sponges to take DNA samples from the bottom of the ocean. Curious Seals, he told me, maybe a nuisance. When he puts his riots and places them in his collection net, they sometimes bite them, perforating the bags and spoiling his samples.

Under the Navy Mammal Protection Act, approaching 50 meters from seals and dolphins is considered harassment, but they are free to harass you, which seems only just given the centuries of whale and deadly hunting which preceded a generational change in the way we consider the world around us.

The quarter work took place in 1969, the year when a massive oil spill coated the coast of Santa Barbara and the Cuyahoga river in Cleveland, caught fire. These two events helped to trigger the first day of the earth in 1970, and the closure of the last American whale hunting station in 1971. Protecting the environment against pollution and loss of wilderness and fauna was quickly transferred from a question of protest to a societal ethics while the environmental legislation of Keystone of America was adopted at the same time, Democrat and signed by a republican president, Richard Nixon.

These laws include the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972) and the Mammal Protection Act (1972), which goes further than the Standed Species Act (1973) to protect all marine mammals, and not just the highs, harassment, killing or capturing American citizens in American citizens in American citizens American waters and high wicks.

All these “green” and more laws are attacked by the Trump administration, its Congress servants and its long -standing opponents of environmental protections, including the oil and gas industry. The dishonest argument of the Republicans to weaken the Disappearance Species Act and the Law on the Protection of Marine Mammals is that the legislation has worked so well to reconstruct the people of fauna that it is time to loosen the regulations for a better balance between nature and the human business. Regarding the populations of marine mammals, this premise is wrong.

On July 22, during a meeting of the subcommittee of natural resources of the Chamber, the republican representative Nick Begich of Alaska introduced a bill which would reduce the law on the protection of marine mammals. Among other things, its proposal would limit the ability of the federal government to take measures against the “accessory taking”, the murder of whales, dolphins and seals by the exploration of oil, ships and boats or drowning as accidental capture (also known as voluntary) in fishing equipment. Begich complained that the protections of marine mammals interfere with “essential projects such as energy development, construction of ports and even fishing operations”.

Representative Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), a member of the Chamber’s Resources Committee classification, calls for a “death sentence” for marine mammals.

It is true that the law of marine mammals was a success in many ways. Since its passage, no marine mammal has disappeared and some species have recovered spectacularly. The number of northern elephant seals migrating to California beaches to mate and moult increased from 10,000 in 1972 to around 125,000 today. There were around 11,000 gray whales off the west coast when the Mammal Protection Act navy became law; In 2016, the population culminated at 27,000.

But not all species have prospered. Historically, there were around 20,000 straight whales from the North Atlantic off the east coast. They got their name because they were the “good” whales at Harpoon – their bodies floated for easy recovery after their death. In 1972, they fell to around 350 individuals. After more than half a century of federal legal protection, the population is estimated at 370. They continue to undergo high death rates of ship strikes, a tangle in fishing equipment and other causes, including noise pollution and more difficulty finding prey in warming.

Off the coast of Florida, a combination of boats and algae pollution threatens some 8,000 to 10,000 Lamantins. The restoration of the population (about 1,000 in 1979) has been significant enough to keep them away from the list of endangered species in 2017, but since the start of this year only, almost 500 have died. Scientists would like to see them replaced, but at least they are still covered by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

A study in 2022 in the Gulf of Mexico revealed that in the areas affected by the oil spill of BP Deepwater Horizon 12 years earlier, the dolphin population had decreased by 45% and that it could take 35 years to recover. In the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska, Loss of sea ice Threat of polar bears (they are considered to be marine mammals), arc heads and beluga whales, bites, anchored seals and harp seals.

On the west coast, the number of gray whales – a story of success of the act of marine mammals and now an edifying story – has crushed more than half in the last decade at less than 13,000, according to a recent report by the ocean and atmospheric national administration (NOAA, the country’s main ocean agency, is an endangered species in the time of Trump). The decline in prey, including tiny shrimp amphipods, in the summer power supply terrains in the Arctic, probably caused by warming water, is considered a major contributor to their famine deaths and reduced birth rate rates.

The diving numbers of the whale are only a signal that climate change alone makes the maintenance of the act of urgent marine mammal. Waves of widespread marine heat linked to a warming ocean contribute to the loss of Varech forests on which sea otters and other marine mammals depend. Algae flowers off California, and for the first time, Alaska, supercharged by warmer waters and nutrient pollution, lead to the death of thousands of dolphins and sea lions.

What the Trump administration and its anti-regulation, anti-environmental supporters do not recognize is that the loss of marine mammals is an indicator of declining health of our oceans and the natural world on which we depend and part of. This time, saving the whales will be to save us.

David Helvarg is Executive Director of Blue Frontier, a group of ocean policies. His next book, “Forest of the Sea: the remarkable life and readled future of keelp,“” should be published in 2026.