Park managers at Glacier Bay in Alaska are grappling with how to protect the world-class preserve and its wildlife while providing access to the creatures and landscape that thousands come to see each season.
Jeffrey R. Richardson
Exploring the broad bay that makes up just a portion of the 3.3-million-acre Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska is like traveling back to the Ice Age, when ice and snow dominated the North American landscape. "It's geology happening right before you," says Ken Leghorn, a long-time guide in the park. "The story of glaciation and how it forms the landscapes, the colonization of new plant and animal species-that's all happening in Glacier Bay. And the marine shoreline is where a lot of the biological significance of the park is."
This, the nation's largest protected marine ecosystem, is best known for its 17 tidewater glaciers and whale-watching opportunities. "What makes Glacier Bay special is the proximity of a vibrant marine ecosystem right next to some of the most rugged, panoramic mountains in the world, with glaciers connecting the two," says Jim Stratton, Alaska regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.
That fabulous view-along with the hope of seeing minke, humpback, or orca whales, Dall and harbor porpoises, Steller sea lions, harbor seals, and a host of birds, including the endangered marbled and Kittlitz's murrelets, nesting bald eagles, and tufted puffins-draws hundreds of thousands of people each year.
And nearly every one of those visitors arrives by water, most often aboard cruise ships that can carry thousands of people. More than 100 cruise ships are allowed in the bay each season, but that number has been the focus of more than a decade of wrangling between Alaska's congressional delegation and conservationists. On one side are the politicians who would like to boost the number of cruise ships allowed in the bay; on the other are conservationists who fear too great an increase will harm the very creatures visitors come to see.
This point was brought home in July 2001, when a cruise ship carrying hundreds of passengers accidentally rammed and killed a pregnant humpback whale.
With fears that increased vessel traffic might be disrupting movements of whales in the area, the event underscored the difficulty of managing cruise ship traffic, given aggressive industry efforts to increase access to Glacier Bay and reduce oversight of its operations. It was also a forceful reminder of the potentially high costs of tourism: At what point do the impacts of visitors on priceless natural areas create a cost-benefit nightmare that degrades the ecosystem, the visitor experience, and, ultimately, tourism's bottom line?
Visits by cruise ships and smaller vessels to Glacier Bay had begun to climb dramatically in the 1970s, at the same time whale sightings inexplicably declined. Although no definitive link between the two trends has been established, the National Park Service (NPS) has stepped up research and worked to strengthen vessel regulation. This spring, the agency issued an environmental impact statement for a revised Vessel Management Plan.
"The most significant point to come away with for the Vessel Management Plan will be this: What are we going to do at the end of this plan to make whale deaths less likely," says Elizabeth Fayad, NPCA's counsel. "We must have more stringent standards of protection for places like Glacier Bay. We can't expect the same Coast Guard standards that regulate New York harbor to serve as a standard for a pristine world-class resource like Glacier Bay."
Whether the park's Vessel Manage-ment Plan can protect the park's creatures remains to be seen. It's a tall order, because the plan's reach extends not only to cruise ships but to the smaller day tour and charter vessels operating out of nearby Juneau and Gustavus, whose numbers have also been burgeoning in recent years.
Since the mid-1990s, cruise lines have been pushing to increase the number of ships allowed in the bay, with strong backing from the Alaska congressional delegation. More than six years ago, the Park Service issued a plan that called for an increase of 72 percent. That number dropped to 30 percent, an increase from 107 to 139 vessels per season-even though the agency acknowledged that it had no scientific basis for such an increase.
Last year, NPCA won a significant victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals that required NPS to roll back vessel numbers and prepare an environmental impact statement before determining any increases in the number of vessels. This ruling sets an important precedent for proper planning in parks.
However, politics intervened even before the study could begin. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) shot down the rollback with a rider on the Interior Department appropriations bill voiding the court decisions and returning the cruise ship numbers to 139 entries per season.
The Stevens rider was not the first of its kind affecting Glacier Bay. In 1996, Alaska's other Republican senator, Frank Murkowski (now the governor of the state), had pushed through a rider blocking tighter operating conditions on cruise vessels to reduce pollution and noise.
What makes these end runs of the public process so egregious to many is the litany of water and air quality violations, in Alaska and around the world, racked up by the cruise industry. Some companies have gone to great lengths to hide illegal dumping of oily bilge water, chemicals (such as photo processing and dry cleaning solvents), and barely treated sewage-including lying to investigators about such practices.
"We're also concerned about the noise generated by ships entering the bay," says NPCA's Stratton. "And just the level of general disturbance created by increasing traffic. The kind of disturbance that creates stress on animals also disrupts their movements and feeding cycles, causing them to burn critical energy in responding to vessels."
Leghorn says cruise ships affect the bay in other ways as well, resulting in air quality violations. "Visually and aesthetically, cruise ships leave a huge plume of smoke that can be seen for miles and last for hours," he says. "A ship can lay a smoke layer that's still visible when it comes back out."
Tomie Lee, superintendent at Glacier Bay, shares all of these concerns, although she notes that some companies have demonstrated a willingness to change their approach to environmental issues. Holland America, for example, has voluntarily raised a number of environmental standards in its operations.
For all vessels, park managers are grappling with two parameters for defining use and impacts: limits on both daily entries and the overall season. For cruise ships, a daily limit of two per day may be workable ecologically and also about right for cruise passengers, many of whom do not want to see other cruise ships during their sojourn.
"The urgency is that if the agency doesn't establish a scientifically defensible vessel limit, Congress will set an arbitrary one," says NPCA's Stratton. "We need to provide the opportunity to the Park Service to do the science. There should not be any increase in the number of vessels until we have conclusive proof that there will not be detrimental impacts to the park. However, if you don't provide some opportunity for growth, it will be done for you." He adds, "Alaska's congressional delegation is very powerful. They've never been reluctant to legislate park management."
Leghorn believes the integrity of the Glacier Bay ecosystem has not suffered dramatically from vessel traffic, but agrees the risk is there. He is especially concerned about the fragile shoreline where cruise ships can't go, but smaller vessels can virtually swarm.
"Every commercial concession inside the park has grown dramatically," says Leghorn. "There have been huge increases in commercial uses and a steady rise in personal uses."
Greg Streveler, formerly a research scientist for the park and now a consulting ecologist and geologist based in Gustavus, agrees. "I worry considerably more about the smaller vessels that can get in close to shore and make more contact with wildlife. The shoreline is where the action is around here, and that's where most people want to go when they visit," he says. "It's amazing where some of those mid-sized boats can get into-almost as close as a skiff-and that's where they get into trouble. They're under a lot of competitive pressure to find wildlife and get in close to it."
Even kayaks can pose risks, says Judy Brakel, anthropologist and wilderness guide for Alaska Discovery, a Juneau-based ecotourism firm. Brakel says studies have shown that kayaks are more disturbing to wildlife than motor boats at the same distance. Some tour boats with overnight trips are dropping dozens of kayakers at a time in coves and inlets for several hours of paddling.
For Brakel and others, access and transit in fragile ecosystems pose difficult, painful challenges. A price must be paid to protect the scenic and ecological splendor that draws increasing numbers of visitors, even if that price involves limits through increased regulation. Glen Nelson, owner and operator of Wolf Track Expeditions of Gustavus and a veteran whale watcher, agrees. "There has to be give and take; you can't have unlimited access," he says. "And both a healthy ecosystem and quality visitor experience have a direct and equal influence on the value of the tourism industry."
Part of this equation includes ensuring that the Park Service has the policies, the resources, and the latitude to manage vessel traffic with scientific objectivity. "Cruise ships are a great way to handle 2,000 visitors if done right. And I genuinely think the larger companies want to do it right," says Stratton. "But there's a limit to how much visitation this ecosystem can stand and still be a healthy, functioning ecosystem."
