Local chambers of commerce, while acknowledging that the Makah's nationally televised shooting of a young Gray whale on May 17 has impacted tourism, have attempted to put the blame on poor weather. However, fishing and whale watching is booming just across the Canadian border in British Columbia. The Makah have announced they will hunt again when the whales start to migrate south in October, and may take a whale before their Makah Days celebration August 28. They're getting ready to go out again, and they're talking about taking as many as five whales. Sea Shepherd notes that the tribe is now proposing to go hunting just after a spring Gray whale migration that had the highest mortality rate ever recorded.
Scientists are unsure as to the cause.
Opinion polls and Washington newspapers have reported overwhelming public opposition to the Makah hunt. The state needs to seek relief from the tragic policies and actions of the federal government that are perpetuating this blood sacrifice in U.S. waters. The IWC has refused to recognize any subsistence need on the part of the Makah to hunt whales. The U.S. government, in attempting to honor its obligation to the Makah treaty, is thus violating its obligation to uphold the Convention of the IWC, to which it is signatory. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society successfully deployed its ships and small craft to curtail hunting efforts in Neah Bay for several months in 1998, and has proposed Congressional legislation to return a portion of former Makah lands to the tribe in exchange for an amendment of the whaling clause in the treaty that ceded the land to the United States in 1855.