Herd Declining at Game Sanctuary : Privacy-Seeking Walruses May Be ‘Defecting’ to Soviet Union From U.S.

Noisy sightseers and fishermen intruding on the walruses of Round Island may be causing the blubbery beasts to defect to the Soviet Union, where they enjoy more privacy.

Each summer, thousands of bull walruses crawl out on the huge rocks that ring the shore of this mist-enshrouded island 13 miles off southwest Alaska.

The puffing, snorting, hissing mammals ponderously heave their 2 tons of bulk from the frigid waters of the Bering Sea and shoulder and poke their way with their huge ivory tusks into the overlapping mass of their thick-skinned brethren.

Each is seeking a place in the sun, a spot to rest between seven- to 10-day feeding frenzies.

From a distance, they look like layers of cinnamon-colored fringe stitched to the base of the cliffs. Up close, they look more like bewhiskered bachelors sleeping off the effects of a boozy beach party--eyes closed, heads down, their bodies oozing into crevices in the rocks.

While the males are piled up on beaches as far south as Kodiak Island and Yakutat Bay, the females and their young remain with the pack ice north of the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean.

But the number of Pacific walruses that haul out here and in lesser numbers at the other six islands of the Walrus Islands State Game Sanctuary have started to decline again, after a spectacular comeback that peaked in the 1970s.

On Round Island they have enjoyed considerable privacy in the past, largely because of the weather and location. The nearest community is Togiak, about 33 miles by charter boat to the northeast.

Summertime weather is characterized by wind, rain and high waves that make approach by floatplane or small boat hazardous if not impossible.

But with increased commercial bottom-fishing activity and the prospect of oil exploration and development in salmon-rich Bristol Bay, all that isolation may come to an end. And that has some professional walrus-watchers concerned.

“Walruses are pretty sensitive to disturbance,” said Lloyd Lowry, a marine mammal specialist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.

“There’s more than a little concern that the noise caused by the fishery has adversely influenced the haul-out. People on the island say they sometimes can hear the radios on the bridges of the boats.”

Ken Taylor, another state biologist, monitors walrus numbers from his office in Dillingham.

“In the mid-1970s, we had as many as 15,000 animals there,” Taylor said. “It was 4,400 last year and about 4,500 now. The difficult thing is there are so many reasons for the numbers to go up and down.

“To my mind, the sheer number of boats out there with motors droning in the water sets up an acoustical noise that may be a cause.”

The two game technicians on Round Island this summer, Polly Hessing and Judy Brandt, said they counted as many as 180 boats in the area during a peak fishing period this spring.

Although the vessels were outside the 2-mile limit established around the sanctuary, the noise they made was loud enough to force the women to close the windows in their cabin so they could sleep.

The state set up the sanctuary in 1960 to protect the last remaining walrus hauling grounds in the south Bering Sea.

Thirty permits a day--half for overnight and half for day use--are available for people wishing to visit the island.

Access, however, is restricted to a narrow corridor fronting a grassy campground. New arrivals are asked to anchor offshore until the technicians can pick them up in their small, inflatable raft.

Although walruses get top billing, the treeless island also supports nearly 450,000 sea birds, primarily common murres, black-legged kittiwakes, cormorants, parakeet auklets, horned and tufted puffins and gulls.

Red fox on the island are unafraid of people and often share trails with campers.

Hundreds of sea lions provide a change in the sound track on the island’s southern beaches, and a showy mix of wildflowers anchors the thin soil on its talus-covered slopes.

No one seems to know much about the dynamics of the Pacific walrus herd. It is believed to comprise about 234,000 animals, back to its 18th-Century levels before commercial harvesting severely depleted its numbers.

“We have a lot of broad-scale information, but little in the way of specifics about haul-outs and food,” Lowry said. “We know the population is large; we don’t know its bounds. Walrus came back from virtually no animals in the ‘40s, to peak counts in the late ‘70s.”

The population on Round Island dipped as low as 3,000 in 1983.

Changes in the climate, variations in the food chain, the growing volume of noise and other human disturbances are being blamed for what appears to be a downward trend.

“Two years does not a trend make, but we are becoming concerned,” Lowry said. “Walrus are fairly traditional about where they haul out. So are sea lions. But there are several other places they could go and we don’t know if the herd is simply splitting up or what it’s doing.”

The 2-mile buffer and surveillance by fish and game personnel stationed there from May to September of each year is credited with limiting some of the human disturbance, such as illegal hunting, spotter planes from the herring fishery buzzing the island and boats coming too close.

Taylor said the Soviet Union is more protective of its walrus herd.

“On the Soviet coast, aircraft are held to 10,000-foot minimums and boats restricted to 16 miles,” he said. “It may be because of those more severe restrictions that more Pacific walruses are hauling out there.”