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In the second federal ruling in the past month to shock Pacific fishermen, a Seattle judge has banned Alaska trawlers from the habitat of endangered Stellar sea lions.
As in Hawaii, environmentalists are claiming victory. But the Alaska fishing industry says it could lose $275 million in the next year as a result.
"The judge has finally recognized what the National Marine Fisheries Service refused to recognize: that trawling threatens the habitat of the seal and has to be halted until the National Marine Fisheries Service fully assesses the impacts of these fisheries," said Janis Searles, attorney with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund representing Greenpeace USA, American Oceans Campaign and the Sierra Club in a lawsuit against the federal fisheries agency.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly ruled yesterday that trawling in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bearing Sea threatens the habitat of the huge Stellar sea lion, which competes with fishermen for pollock, cod and mackerel.
According to the At-Sea Processors Association, Zilly's ruling could cost the area's fishing industry $100 million this year and $175 million in the first half of next year.
Sea lion populations in the area have dropped more than 80 percent in the past 30 years, according to plaintiffs in the suit. The decline coincides with the growth of a major fishing industry in the area since the 1960s, the groups say.
Alaskan trawlers drag large nets, some of them 600 feet long, to sweep up a variety of fish.
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund filed suit against the fisheries service two years ago, saying the agency had not done an environmental impact statement or other studies to determine the impact of trawling on the endangered animal. Yesterday's order followed a ruling in January in which the judge instructed the National Marine Fisheries Service to conduct environmental studies on the trawling fishery.
The Honolulu office of the same law firm filed suit last year against the fisheries agency, saying it allowed a major longline industry to develop in Hawaii without determining the impacts of longliners on the Pacific leatherback and other endangered sea turtles. U.S. District Judge David Ezra last November ordered a 1.5 million square-mile area of ocean north of Hawaii closed pending environmental studies and last month expanded the area to include 6.5 million square miles.
Fishermen in Hawaii have been loudly protesting the order, saying they are the victims of an order directed at the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Ezra's order, to go into effect Wednesday, will cut longlining by 95 percent and kill a $50 million fishing industry, the fishermen say.
Both the leatherback and the Stellar sea lion are huge animals, the largest of their species. Leatherbacks grow up to eight feet in length and can weigh a ton, while the Stellar can reach 10 feet and 2,000 pounds.
But concerns over the two animals are different. While Hawaii's longliners sometimes snag or hook turtles while dragging thousands of hooks for tuna or swordfish, the threat in Northwestern waters is to the sea lion's source of food.
