Makah Indian Tribe did not OK whale shooting

In this photo released by the U.S. Coast Guard, an injured California gray whale was swims Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007 in Neah Bay, Wash., after being shot with a machine gun and harpooned off the western tip of Washington state. 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, according to Mark Oswell a spokesman for the law enforcement arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Makah Indian Tribe's whaling commission did not authorize the killing of a gray whale that died after being harpooned and shot several times in northwest Washington's Strait of Juan de Fuca, a member of the tribal panel said.

"The commission had not reviewed this," Chad Bowechop told the Peninsula Daily News in a story that appeared Sunday.

The U.S. Coast Guard detained five men believed to have killed the whale on Saturday, then turned them over to tribal police for further questioning.

Tribal officials did not return calls from The Associated Press. The tribe's chairman, Ben Johnson, told The Seattle Times that tribal whalers were out practicing hunting skills Saturday in keeping with their treaty rights to hunt whales.

Witnesses said the gray whale had been harpooned a few miles east of Neah Bay and that five men on two small boats fired shots from what sounded like a high-caliber rifle.

Mark Oswell, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said investigators are looking into whether the whale was killed because it had become entangled in a fishing net.

The whale was headed toward the Pacific Ocean after being wounded and later disappeared beneath the surface, dragging down buoys that had been attached to a harpoon. A biologist for the tribe declared the animal dead, Petty Officer Shawn Eggert said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer David Marin said his agency had no information indicating the whale had gotten trapped in netting before it was shot.

The men who killed the whale could face federal civil penalties of up to $20,000 each, said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the fisheries service.

The federal government removed the gray whale from the endangered species list in 1994. Five years later, with a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service, Makah tribal members killed their first whale in seven decades.

Animal welfare activists sued, leading to a court order that the tribe must obtain a waiver under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act to continue hunting whales.

On Sunday, the Humane Society of the United States and its international arm called the killing "extremely disturbing" and called for the government to cease its consideration of the Makah's waiver request until a full investigation of the killing is complete.

John McCarty, a former tribal whaling commission member who has been an advocate of the Makah's right to resume whaling, said the tribe had been close to obtaining the waiver.

"I don't know why they did this. It's terrible," McCarty told The Times. "I think the anti-whalers will be after us in full force, and we look ridiculous. Like we can't manage our own people, we can't manage our own whale."

The Makah Tribe has more than 1,000 members and is based in Neah Bay.