NOAA designates critical habitat for ice seals listed as threatened
New federal rules went into effect last week protecting the habitats of ice seals off the coast of Alaska.
Arctic ringed seals, or natchiq, and the Beringia distinct population segment of bearded seals, or ugruk, have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act since December 2012.
Typically the federal government is mandated to outline a critical habitat for a species within a year of an ESA listing. After nearly a decade of legal challenges, NOAA Fisheries finally established zones where any activity requiring federal permits or involving federal funding or authorization would need to ensure the seals’ habitats are not harmed.
The new regulations may mean an extra step in the federal review process for industries like oil and gas, but the Alaska Native subsistence harvest of ringed or bearded seals is not affected.
“Per the regulation, this listing does not impact seal harvest,” said Brandon Ahmasuk, the subsistence resources program director at Kawerak. “Currently the population size is still quite large. We can still harvest as we’ve always done.”
NOAA claims it has not identified any likely project modifications that would be required solely to avoid impacts to the habitats of these seals. At the time of publication, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not responded to a request for comment about how the new regulations could affect the planned expansion of the Port of Nome. However, NOAA Fisheries spokesperson Julie Fair said, “Generally speaking, port construction projects are unlikely to have substantial effects on critical habitat for these seals.”
The largely overlapping habitat designations cover an offshore area roughly the size of Texas, from the Canadian border in the Beaufort Sea, down to St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea. The habitat for bearded seals extends to include a larger area south of Nunivak Island.
NOAA has excluded a chunk of the Beaufort Sea that the Navy uses for training and testing activities.
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski called the move “beyond federal overreach” in a statement last month. Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said that listing the seals in the first place was “unjustified” because their populations are “robust and healthy.”
The seals were protected primarily due to threats linked to changes in climate, such as decreasing sea ice and on-ice snow depth.
“People often think of a threatened or endangered species as one that has already declined substantially, but the ESA specifically requires us to consider threats both in the present and in the foreseeable future,” said Fair.
As the Arctic warms faster than other regions of the planet, sea ice is experiencing major changes in the timing of its formation, its thickness and its extent. The Arctic lost onethird of its winter sea ice volume (an amount equivalent to 6,000 cubic kilometers) from 2003 to 2021, according to a recent study using satellite data in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. Meanwhile NASA currently estimates that the amount of Arctic sea ice each September, when coverage is at its annual minimum, is now declining at a rate of 13 percent per decade.
Both seal species use sea ice as a platform for basking, molting, resting and birthing. Ringed seals especially need adequate snow depths on sea ice so they can build lairs where pups nurse and grow in a protected area. NOAA says that early ice breakup and early snow melt have been associated with increased pup mortality from premature weaning and hypothermia. The final rule published in the Federal Register on April 1 cited Alaska Native hunters from Kotzebue, Alaska, who reported that when the snow melts early, ringed seal pups lack protection from predators such as jaegers, ravens and foxes.
The coastal boundary for the critical habitat designated by NOAA begins where water reaches a depth of
about 3 meters. Kawerak had submitted comments to NOAA last year arguing that the habitat should include the river mouths, estuaries, lagoon systems and other nearshore areas of the Seward Peninsula and Norton Sound.
Kawerak documented that areas like Safety Sound, Bonanza Channel and Imuruk Basin are important especially during the ice-free times in the spring, summer and fall, as they provide shelter from storms and predators for pups that are still honing their fishing skills. In its final rule NOAA claimed it did not have enough evidence to include these waterways.