By R. Robin McDonald from Daily Report

A group of marine biologists, scientists and conservationists—and several celebrities—have asked a judge in Atlanta to allow them to file a brief backing a decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to bar the Georgia Aquarium from importing 18 beluga whales to the United States from Russia.

Hollywood stars including Kim Basinger, Shannen Doherty and Hayden Panettiere, as well as the producers of the documentaries “Blackfish” and “The Cove,” and scientists such as Jean-Michel Cousteau, Dr. Jane Goodall, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Denise Herzing, Janet Mann and Emory University’s Lori Marino are among those who have petitioned U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to allow them to publish the brief in the court record.

Eighteen months ago, the Georgia Aquarium sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service, seeking to overturn the federal agencies’ decision to deny the aquarium a permit to import the whales.

The whales had been captured in the Sea of Okhotsk by what aquarium lawyers described in their complaint as “Russian experts under the supervision of a scientific institute affiliated with the Russian Academy of Science.”

The aquarium suit claimed that in denying the permit, the federal agencies imposed legal standards “found nowhere in law,” “employed ad hoc and unsupportable methodologies to assess the effect of the collection on the wild [beluga whale] population that have not been peer reviewed and have not been applied to any other permit applicant, and ignored the best scientific information available.”

The proposed friend of the court brief says that “it is now commonly accepted” that marine mammals “must not be removed from the wild for purposes of public display,” and that the Georgia Aquarium “should not be allowed to turn back the clock on the [Marine Mammal Protection Act] and re-establish the U.S. as a marketplace for [marine mammals] forcibly removed from their natural environment.”

The brief also describes the pending suit as “a defining moment in the history of the MMPA [Marine Mammals Protection Act].”

“The decision,” it said, “will determine the vitality of the long-standing precautionary principle that the MMPA should be construed for the benefit of marine mammals, not those who exploit them. It will define whether NMFS [the National Marine Fisheries Service], the expert agency responsible for the MMPA, is entitled to deference in applying the law and making scientific judgments.”

The brief also said the suit will determine whether permit applicants like the aquarium “must meet a heavy burden of proof before being allowed to invoke the narrow exceptions to the MMPA’s prohibitions on take (harass, hunt, capture, kill) and importation. And it will determine whether the MMPA has evolved to the point where the practice of removing [marine mammals] from the wild for maintenance in captivity for public display in the U.S. is an artifact of the past.”

The amicus brief was filed by Charles Samel with Perkins Coie in Los Angeles, Donald Baur of Perkins Coie in Washington, and Atlanta attorney Robert Benton Jackson IV. Samel and Baur are representing two other organizations, the Humane Society of the United States and Defenders of Wildlife, that also have filed friend of the court briefs on behalf of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

IMAGE: Georgia Aquarium John Disney/Daily Report

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