Posted under Crime
A California gray whale that was harpooned and shot with a machine gun off the western tip of Washington state has died, officials said. Coast Guard Petty Officer Kelly Parker said five people believed to be members of the Makah Tribe shot and harpooned the whale Saturday morning. A preliminary report said the whale was shot with a .50-caliber machine gun, Mark Oswell, a spokesman for the law enforcement arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said.
Petty Officer Shawn Eggert said the whale disappeared beneath the surface in the evening, dragging buoys that had been attached to the harpoon, and did not resurface. A biologist working for the Makah Indian tribe declared it dead, Eggert said.
Tribe members were being held by the Coast Guard but had not been charged, Oswell said. The suspects could face civil penalties of up to $20,000 each and up to a year in jail, said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Criminal prosecution under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act is rare, Gorman noted. “While it remains an option, I think we have to finish our investigation before we make any kind of call like that,” Gorman told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Coast Guard officials created a 1,000-yard safety zone around the injured whale, which was shot about a mile east of Neah Bay in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The whale had begun heading to sea Saturday afternoon, Oswell said.
Although the tribe has subsistence fishing rights to kill whales, Oswell said preliminary information indicates the whale may have been shot illegally. “We allow native hunts for cultural purposes. However, this does not appear to be of that nature so far,” he said.
The Makah Indian Tribe’s whaling commission said it did not authorize the killing.