HJR 26-SEA OTTER MANAGEMENT  4:44:51 PM CO-CHAIR WAGONER announced consideration of HJR 26 [CSHJR 26(RES)am was before the committee]. CO-CHAIR PASKVAN moved to bring CSHJR 26(RES), \D.A, before the committee for purposes of discussion. CO-CHAIR WAGONER objected. 4:45:20 PM REPRESENTATIVE PEGGY WILSON, sponsor of HJR 26, Alaska State Legislature, said she could answer questions but her intern would explain the resolution. ARTHUR MARTIN, intern for Representative Peggy Wilson, Alaska State Legislature, Juneau, AK, explained that during the 18th and 19th century because of the fur trade, sea otters were almost completely wiped out on the North American continent. In the years between 1965 and 1969 efforts were made to reintroduce sea otters back to their historic regions and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) reintroduced approximately 400 sea otters into Southeast Alaska. In 1972 the management responsibility for them was transferred from the state to the federal government under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. The issue Alaska has struggled with is that the federal government has no viable long term management plan for them. The US Fish and Wildlife Service created a management plan in 1994, but it hasn't been revised since then. In the meantime, sea otters in Southeast are flourishing and their population has grown to such a level that they are actually threatening the balance of the eco system, which is hurting the Southeast Alaska economy. MR. MARTIN said that Southeast Alaska has a population of some 20,000 sea otters and their number grows by about 12 percent a year. They eat approximately 23 percent of their body weight each day in crabs, abalone and clams. Together with the dive fisheries, they consume about 253,000 pounds of food in a single day. According to a McDowell Report, dated November 2011, sea otter predation on the red sea cucumber, geoduck clam, red sea urchin and Dungeness crab fisheries have already caused the Southeast Alaska economy $28.3 million directly and indirectly since 1995. To put this in perspective, last year sea otters ate an estimated 7 million pounds of commercial species whereas the entire 2010 Southeast Alaska harvest in dive and Dungeness crab fisheries was about 6 million pounds. If this trend continues, Southeast Alaska will no longer have a viable dive fish economy. The McDowell Report said that commercial dive fisheries and large populations of sea otters cannot co-exist in the same waters. 4:48:07 PM He explained that related to the sea otter population is the issue that although Alaska Native peoples may harvest sea otters, they are limited only to selling authentic and traditional Native handicrafts under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. This resolution is asking that while discussing the sea otter management issue the terms "authentic and traditional" be replaced with "Alaska Native articles of handicraft" to expand a cottage or niche industry and to clear up any legal gray area. He said with the Marine Mammal Protection Act being 40 years old, things have honestly changed. Sea otter populations have grown at an impressive rate and it's time to consider a long term management plan as well as broadening the scope of allowable uses for sea otters in Alaska Native handicrafts. SENATOR WIELECHOWSKI asked how sea otters, crabs, sea urchins, cucumbers and abalones co-existed ecologically before humans were around to manage them. MR. MARTIN replied that he didn't know if research had been done on that issue, but theory suggests that while the sea otter populations were relative large before the fur trade, the populations of dive fisheries - sea urchins and sea cucumbers - were relatively small. After the fur harvest of the 19th century the sea otter populations decreased and so the dive fisheries began to flourish, which created an economy here. Now that the sea otters are beginning to rebound, they clash with the Southeast economy and current ecology. SENATOR FRENCH asked where the 23 percent of their body weight each day came from. Is that the upper limit or the average number? MR. MARTIN replied that it came from the McDowell Report as well as other reports. Male sea otters can grow up to 100 pounds and females can grow up to 80 pounds, so they took a statistical average and came up with 23 percent. SENATOR FRENCH asked if there is an average number given in the report. REPRESENTATIVE P. WILSON said one of the reasons sea otters eat so much is because they don't retain body fat. They have to constantly eat to stay warm and keep from losing weight. MR. MARTIN noted that page 8 of the McDowell Report said that the animals have a high metabolism and require large amounts of food, and in captivity will consume up to 25 percent of their body weight per day (from the US Fish and Wildlife Service). CO-CHAIR WAGONER said he had seen them eat just about everything in the salt water; 90 percent of the time when you see a sea otter it'll be on its back with something on its chest to eat. 4:54:02 PM CO-CHAIR PASKVAN said to a certain extent they are calling on the federal government to do certain things and asked what the state is doing currently with respect to cooperative agreements and working with Alaskans to establish strategies and plans for sustainable management. MR. MARTIN replied that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to do some things in that Alaska Native peoples are the only group allowed to harvest sea otters. One of the issues is that a legal gray area exists in defining "traditional and authentic" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and they are working on getting more public comment to rewrite their definitions. But beyond that, the federal government hasn't done anything. They just let sea otters grow and the 1994 management plan hopes sea otters will reach an optimal sustainable population range and at some point they will just start shooting them, but there is no other plan. CO-CHAIR WAGONER said they need to remember that the state and private investors are spending millions of dollars trying to establish a shellfish industry and there has to be a balance some place. SENATOR WIELECHOWSKI said it's always a little bit dangerous when mankind plays around with ecological balances and asked if there are any studies about the ramifications of possible over- managing the sea otter population - to sea kelp, for instance. REPRESENTATIVE P. WILSON replied that they didn't have a way to know except when they were becoming extinct and there wasn't a sea kelp crisis during that time. Nothing crashed at that time. She said the third paragraph of the sponsor statement said the 1994 conservation plan for the sea otter in Alaska stated that although an optimum sustainable population had not been defined, the stock was believed to be within that range. That was 18 years ago and the plan was to be reviewed annually and revised at least every three to five years, and that hasn't happened. CO-CHAIR WAGONER remarked that Southeast is not the only place being affected by sea otters. They decimated the prolific steamer calm beds in Kachemak Bay that were always very rich. SENATOR FRENCH referenced a "Wikipedia" page talking about the economic impact of sea otters that said: Some of their preferred prey species - abalone, crab, clam - are also food sources for humans in some areas. Massive declines in shellfish harvests have been blamed on the sea otter, and intense public debate has taken place over how to manage the competitive between humans and sea otters for seafood. But it is complicated by the fact that sea otters have often been held responsible for clam and shellfish stocks that were more likely caused by overfishing by humans, disease, pollution and seismic activity. Shellfish declines have also occurred in many parts of the North American Pacific Coast, but do not have sea otters and conservationists sometimes note that the existence of large concentrations of shellfish on the coast is a recent development resulting from the fur trades' near extirpation of the sea otter. Although many factors affect shellfish stocks, sea otter predation can deplete a fishery to the point that it's no longer commercially viable. There is a consensus among scientists that sea otters and abalone fisheries cannot co-exist in the same area and the same is likely true of for other types of shellfish, as well. CO-CHAIR WAGONER said he would hold HJR 26 until Friday.