NEAH BAY — One man pushed the nutritional value of whale meat.
One woman applauded the positive economic impact anti-whaling protestors will have when they stay in Clallam Bay.
About 50 people — almost all of them members of the Makah tribe — offered a panorama of opinions Wednesday night at a scoping meeting on the Makah’s request to resume whaling.
The composition of the audience largely precluded any conflict, anticipated but never encountered by six police officers.
Rather, people offered testimony that sometimes seemed to baffle the National Marine Fisheries Service staff people who managed the meeting.
Fisheries Service staff collected 20 flip-chart pages of comments that they will share with participants when the sessions are over this month.
The Fisheries Service solicited statements about alternatives to the Makah’s proposal and about the environmental effect of a resumption of whaling.
The testimony eventually will be considered for a draft environmental impact statement and a decision on whether the Makah can go whaling again.
Comments included:
* The government should consider the ceremonial importance and religious value that whaling has to the Makah.
* The 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay, by which the tribe retained the right to kill whales, should be sufficient permission to do so.
* Makah members present and future will be bereft of their marine culture if whaling is banned.
* If the government forbids the Makah to take whales, it should return the lands the tribe ceded to the United States.
The scoping meetings will resume at 6:30 p.m. today in the Vern Burton Center, 208 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles; at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Naval Reserve Building, 860 Terry Ave. N., in South Lake Union Park, Seattle; and on Oct. 18 in Washington, D.C.
