Spouting Off : Critics Call Whale-Watch Limits Impractical

Charter boat captains who make their living taking people whale watching along Orange County’s coastline say new federal guidelines to crack down on boaters who venture too close to the mammals are impractical, because no one is there to enforce them.

“I have been doing whale-watching charters for 13 years and I have never seen anyone policing whale watchers,” said John Schweitzer, 45, a veteran boat captain from Dana Point. “There is no enforcement now, and there won’t be any in the future with all the cutbacks in Washington.”

Federal rules already set a 100-yard safety zone around all sea mammals. But the new rule, proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, would make it easier to prosecute violators by dropping the current requirement of proof that a boat not only came too close but disrupted the whales’ normal behavior.

Don Wilkie of San Diego said the controversial proposal is a good example of government attempting to fix something that isn’t broken.

“The (federal) guidelines that exist now are fine,” said Wilkie, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s new Stephen Birch Aquarium-Museum, one of several Southern California museums that regularly sponsor whale-watching trips. “It’s simply a question of enforcing them . . . (but) if you’re not enforcing them, they’re meaningless.”

Jack Kemnitz, 33, skipper of the Newport Beach-based California Dawn, said even the 100-yard rule can be too restrictive.

“It depends on the whale. Some are shy and some will come right up to the boat,” Kemnitz said. “We’re not out there harassing whales.”

There is near-universal agreement that marine mammals deserve protection from well-meaning--and, occasionally, mean-spirited--vessel operators who venture too close to migrating whales. But opinions vary on how to ensure that whale watchers don’t interfere with whales making their long migration from cold, northern waters to San Ignacio Lagoon in central Baja California and back.

The National Marine Fisheries Service contends that new regulations will improve protection for whales. Critics reply that the agency never will have the manpower to safeguard whales that encounter thousands of boats during their migratory trek.

In Southern California alone, the proposed federal regulations would cover private vessels and about 75 charter boats that carry whale watchers during the winter months, when gray whales pass close to land on their annual journey to and from breeding and calving grounds in San Ignacio Lagoon. The proposed regulations also would protect porpoises, sea lions and other marine mammals that live in U.S. territorial waters off the East and West coasts as well as Hawaii and Alaska.

Kemnitz said the new regulations are designed to protect the East Coast humpback whales that stay in one place and do not migrate like the California gray whale.

Boat captains view the proposed regulations with dread, said Bob Fletcher, director of the San Diego-based Sportfishing Assn., which represents charter boat owners and operators throughout Southern California.

Fletcher said charter boat captains don’t need additional regulations because they already realize that it is not good for business if they needlessly alienate the migrating whales, Fletcher said, adding that there is no need for anything stricter than the 100-yard guidelines that were established in 1980.

But federal officials say those guidelines, which include stiff fines and the threat of imprisonment in severe cases, have proven difficult to enforce.

“The (existing) guidelines are nothing more than our effort to (help people) to interpret what we view as things that would cause harassment of these animals,” said Jim Lecky, chief of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Los Angeles-based protected species division. “What we want is a stronger tool that will allow us to enforce our rules . . . when vessel operators out there are deliberately getting within very close distances to animals.”

Each year, the understaffed federal agency cites a handful of boaters for failing to remain at least 100 yards away from whales. But because of how the guidelines are written, enforcement is “very difficult,” Lecky said.