Lawyers for Alaska and the federal government squared off in federal court Wednesday at a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the state opposing protection of endangered Steller sea lions through commercial fishing restrictions around the western Aleutian Islands.
The state and seafood organizations contend that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow correct procedures and lacked scientific support for concluding that fishing must be curtailed because sea lions are nutritionally stressed because they aren't getting enough to eat. The state says restricted fishing isn't necessary when the population of western Steller sea lions is growing by 1 percent to 1.5 percent a year.
The lawsuit in U.S. District Court was prompted after NMFS announced late last year that commercial mackerel and cod fisheries in the western Aleutians would be restricted. The closure rule was pushed into place Jan. 1 despite objections. NMFS said it had to comply with the Endangered Species Act.
According to the lawsuit the state filed before the rule was put into effect, "Alaska's fisheries regulation and management would be significantly and immediately impacted by the Service's decisions to close and restrict federal fisheries in the western and central Aleutian Islands."
Ryan Steen, an attorney for one of the industry plaintiffs, Freezer Longline Coalition, said NMFS was unable to find a cause of the stress, yet moved on making a finding of jeopardy in issuing the restrictions.
"That is the fundamental problem here," Steen said Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
NMFS says it acted properly.
John Martin, lead attorney for the agency in the case, said NMFS used the best scientific data available at the time.
He said plaintiffs were painting an overly rosy picture of Steller sea lions and that any improvements are not statistically significant. He noted that much more is known now than was a decade ago, when fishing as an indirect cause of stress to the sea lions was seen as possible. Today it is seen as a likely contributor, he said. That likelihood "couldn't be ruled invalid," he said.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess took the matter under advisement, and said he would act as soon as possible. Gov. Sean Parnell's office has said the restrictions would cost the fisheries tens of millions of dollars annually. Environmental groups Oceana and Greenpeace, represented by Earthjustice, have intervened on behalf of NMFS.
Environmentalists said a biological opinion on sea lions prepared by NMFS was the result of 15 years of scientific research.
The fisheries service has estimated that communities and companies involved in the affected fisheries could lose between $44 and $60 million per year because of the fishery closure.
NMFS says about 49,000 sea lions lived in the western Aleutian Islands, according to a 2008 survey. That's down from 250,000 in the early 1970s. The animals were listed as endangered in 1997.
By RACHEL D'ORO
Associated Press