Unsafe Refuge

Stellwagen Bank is supposed to be a marine life sanctuary, but human exploitation continues

By Scott Allen, Boston Globe Staff, 01/11/99

It is called the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a grand-sounding name that suggests special protection for one of the world's great whale feeding grounds and fish nurseries - almost like a national park on the ocean.

But, for the animals that live on this plateau 25 miles east of Boston, sanctuary is largely an illusion. Whalewatch boats heading to or from the bank have struck at least three whales since 1997 - without breaking sanctuary rules. Fisherman have been allowed to scour almost every inch of the sanctuary floor with nets that damage key elements of the bank's food chain.

And a nautical highway splits Stellwagen, bringing hundreds of Boston-bound cargo ships - and countless smaller boats - that steam as fast as the captains choose through the heart of the sanctuary.

Now, Stellwagen Bank is about to become the first battleground in a national push to make America's marine sanctuaries true havens. Over the next two years, Stellwagen Bank's managers will consider speed limits, areas where fishing is limited or banned, and even entry fees to give meaning to the name `sanctuary.'

"The last thing we need to do is become the tourist council for these areas," said sanctuary manager Brad Barr, who has watched the growing popularity of Stellwagen with concern. "We have a long way to go before we can step back and say we're fulfilling the mission of resource protection."

Although the Scituate-based sanctuary technically is just gathering opinions on how to proceed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chose to review Stellwagen first among the nation's 12 sanctuaries for a reason: The collapse of New England's fishing industry and the explosive growth of whalewatching have made the environmental threats crystal clear.

And conservation groups such as the American Oceans Campaign and the Gloucester-based Whale Center of New England clearly want to use the review to expand the sanctuary's power to protect wildlife, setting a national precedent in the process.

"The sanctuary has made only marginal improvements in the way the resources are managed out there, but you can't blame the sanctuary because their hands are very tied," said Mason Weinrich of the Whale Center of New England, a whale research group that supports sanctuary speed limits and expanding the sanctuary's boundaries.

But federal officials are likely to face resistance as they try to convince mariners and landlubbers alike that a 782-square-mile patch of open sea shouldn't be so open any more. Barr's counterpart in the Florida Keys was burned in effigy when he tried to ban fishing in some areas.

"They'll take over the natural resources and then they'll take over our property rights and then they'll take our guns," warned Carl Hagenkotter, director of the anti-sanctuary Conch Coalition, in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel recently.

By contrast, the first meetings on Stellwagen's future, held around the state last month, were cordial and low-key, but the signs of trouble ahead are clear: Shipping companies dislike speed limits, some whalewatch companies want to avoid regulations altogether, and fishermen feel so beaten down by regulation that they say more would be unfair.

"Sometimes, the environmental community, in their good intentions, fails to bring in the ideas and the thoughts of the marine community," said Capt. Jeff Monroe, until recently the deputy port director at the Massachusetts Port Authority and now port director in Portland, Maine.

The gathering storm over Stellwagen Bank's future could be quite a contrast to 1992, when President George Bush created the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary with applause from almost every quarter.

Stellwagen, an unusually shallow region of the Atlantic fed by nutrients from the deep ocean, is a national treasure, all agreed, a playground for humpbacks and other whales and filled with an uncommon variety of life from almost tropical-looking corals on the bottom to prized bluefin tuna near the surface.

But the perceived threats to Stellwagen Bank in the early 1990s - floating casinos, an old hazardous waste-dumping site, sand and gravel mining - were quite different from the issues confronting the sanctuary today.

In addition, US Rep. Gerry Studds, the driving force in Congress for the sanctuary, opposed restrictions on fishing within its boundaries.

When the dust settled, the sanctuary restricted only a handful of activities, such as sand and gravel mining and gas pipelines. Other than some new money for research and public consciousness raising, business went on as usual on the bank.

Of course, the modest limits in Stellwagen mirrored those in other marine sanctuaries, such as Flower Garden Banks on the Gulf of Mexico, where private companies have oil-drilling leases, and Monterey Bay in California, where managers have fight an ongoing battle with noisy personal watercraft operators

"The sanctuary program ... was very valuable in identifying some important areas in the ocean," said Barbara Jeanne Polo, political director of the California-based American Oceans Campaign. "However, their management plans didn't provide much protection. "

Stellwagen Bank manager Barr believes that the known threats to the sanctuary have changed much since conservationists first proposed protecting Stellwagen Bank in the 1980s, making this the time to increase the sanctuary's conservation work.

New England's whale-watching industry has gone from a handful of boats in the early 1980s to a $20 million industry - on Stellwagen alone - that hauls 860,000 people a year out to see the breaching humpbacks and other marine mammal displays, according to a study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

There's no evidence that whalewatching has reduced whale populations - the endangered humpback population has reached 10,000 and growing - but even some whale-watch companies worry that the industry is entering a more hazardous period when competition for customers causes captains to take more risks.

Most significantly, companies are buying high speed catamarans that can go double the normal 15 miles per hour, allowing them to deliver customers to Stellwagen quicker, but perhaps at the risk of colliding with nearby whales. Last summer, the catamaran Millenium struck and severely injured a humpback whale near Stellwagen as it gained speed to head home.

The 23 to 27 Stellwagen whale-watch boats are still governed only by voluntary guidelines drafted by the industry, making Stellwagen the least-regulated whale-watch site in the country.

"Speed limits need to be established on the sanctuary as well as outside," said Capt. Steve Milliken of the Dolphin Fleet whalewatch in Provincetown, at a conference on whale-watching ethics at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Bourne last week. "We should not balance the risk of a strike on the sanctuary for the greed of the industry."

But most whale-watch companies, which regard themselves as environmentalists, long have resisted regulations.

At the conference, Brian MacDonald of the New England Aquarium said he prefers a stricter version of voluntary guidelines, arguing that regulations cause "red tape" and are difficult to change.

Just as whalewatching has grown, so has private boat traffic, the so-called "mosquito fleet" that flocks to whales when they break the surface. Though pleasure boaters may not be politically well organized, the commercial shipping companies that cross Stellwagen are, and they are sure to object to speed limits or alternate route requirements on them.

Because time is money, cargo ships take the fastest, most direct course possible.

"Speed limits do create a problem for the industry," said Monroe, the Portland port director. He estimates that 250 cargo ships pass through Stellwagen en route to Boston annually. "Physically, unless you station someone at Stellwagen with a radar gun, you can't enforce that."

Scientific understanding of the effects of fishing gear on the sea floor has also increased. Once regarded as a temporary disturbance, heavy nets dragged across the ocean floor are increasingly seen by scientists as a serious threat to the ocean's health.

A study in the journal Conservation Biology last month compared the effects of fishing gear on the sea floor to clear-cutting the forest, suggesting that bottom-dwelling creatures may take years to recover from a single pass by a boat equipped with dragging gear.

``I've seen the damage to the seabed with my own eyes, and it's appalling," said Peter Auster, science adviser to the Stellwagen sanctuary and director of the North Atlantic Undersea Research Center at the University of Connecticut. "I've seen bottoms once covered with gardens of corals, sponges, mussels, and worms turned into barren wastelands."

In response, the sanctuary is considering conservation areas within the sanctuary where fishing for bottom-dwelling fish is either limited or banned outright. Auster will develop specific restrictions in the months to come, but he said they will need to be broad enough to protect the four major types of sea floor - mud, sand, cobble, and boulders.

Unfortunately, plans for conservation measures at Stellwagen Bank come as New England's fishermen are already reeling. Stellwagen Bank has been an important near-shore fishing ground, providing about $12 million a year in seafood, including cod and flounder.

"We have had so many restrictions piled upon the industry in the past several years with the shutdown of so many areas that it is so hard to bring oneself to the point where you have to do more," said William Amaru, a fishermen and member of the regulatory New England Fishery Management Council.

Amaru said fishermen would be more likely to go along with restrictions in Stellwagen Bank if some of the 6,500 square miles of closed areas were reopened.

For now, the future of Stellwagen Bank hangs in the balance, with some people arguing that the sanctuary should essentially become a national park at sea, right down to charging admission.

But sanctuary manager Barr said Stellwagen can't be compared to a national park because of its continued commercial importance and because the federal government cannot control access to the ocean. Ultimately, he said, conservation measures need voluntary support in order to work.

However, Barr hopes that the very debate over Stellwagen's future will get people thinking about the ocean in a new way, not only as a place for private fishing and boating, but as a natural wonder owned by the public. On that score, he said, New Englanders have a long way to go.

"In California, the public will tell you that they own the ocean," said Barr. "In New England, there's no perception of that at all."

This story ran on page D01 of the Boston Globe on 01/11/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.