As the tourism season rolls to a close across Southeast Alaska, the City and Borough of Juneau’s (CBJ) Visitor Industry Task Force (VITF) is considering putting a cap on the amount of whale watching vessels permitted to operate out of Statter Harbor.
According to a tracking document maintained by former NOAA marine mammal specialist Dr. Suzie Teerlink, there were 78 commercial whale watching boats frequently operating out of Auke Bay this year, the majority of which operate out of Statter Harbor. Home to one of the largest commercial whale watching fleets in the world, the number of vessels in Auke Bay far dwarfs other popular destinations like Maui and Monterey Bay.
Though a fleet of that size all but guarantees a high ratio of boats to whales, the effect is then exacerbated by two factors unique to the Auke Bay area: narrow passageways and a comparatively small, though healthy, population of humpbacks.
“If I were to count the amount of whales that we have around Shelter Island at any given point, (…) I usually say there’s anywhere between 10 and 15 that we commonly see,” said Luke Holton, a captain with nearly 10 years under his belt in Juneau’s whale watching fleet.
Throughout the course of an entire season, Juneau may see 100 to 120 different individual whales – a number heightened dramatically during migration periods when many whales travel through the area. Maui, by comparison, has a population of over 10,000 whales with a 2023 commercial fleet of just 45 boats.
“The amount of boats on a single whale here is very frustrating. In Maui I never saw more than three other boats on a whale at any given time. (…) Here, I have seen 10 plus boats on a single whale,” said Grace Anne Trombly, a whale watching guide in both Juneau and Maui. “Many of the bubble netting days this season my captain would stay for 10 minutes before leaving because they just couldn’t stomach 20 boats on a single group of whales.”
According to the 2025 VITF Juneau Tourism Survey Report of Juneau residents, 60% of respondents said they were at least somewhat affected by commercial whale watching boat traffic and wakes and 53% said they don’t believe CBJ is doing enough to manage impacts from the visitor industry.
According to a 2023 presentation by Dr. Teerlink to the assembly, most captains uphold their commitment to safe operations around whales through voluntary Whale SENSE training. Other modes of industry accountability are the Juneau Tourism Best Management Practices program, a forum in part for anonymous reporting on tourism operations in town, and participation in Southeast Alaska Whale Watch Association, an organized body of whale watch tour operators. Concerns brought up through these avenues about fleet size, however, aren’t being translated into changes by companies, the industry associations, or CBJ themselves.
Whale watching vessel congestion impacts guest experience to animal behavior
Holton says that as conditioned as the whales may be to the presence of boats, the continued growth of the fleet is having an observable impact. This year alone, he said he witnessed at least 20 incidents related to overcrowding – and heard of one strike, after the fact, that went unreported.
A 2019 study in Juneau showed that while in the presence of vessels, humpback whales were more likely to increase their speed, change direction, and breathe more quickly. All in all, increased vessel presence meant increased energy use during a critical feeding period for these animals.
“Especially Barnacles with Goose this year,” Holton said of a mom and calf pair. “There’s been times where I’ve had to do courtesy calls on the radio to say, ‘Hey guys, let’s just not watch Barnacles for a couple hours because she is plowing water. She is trying so hard to get away from you guys, moving like 15 knots.’”
Holton also mentioned having seen two other popular whales this season, Flame and Juneauite, regularly stressed out due to vessel congestion.
“These are our high performing whales, and I hate to say that word, but these are whales that people want to stop on — they’re world known,” Holton said.
This sentiment was echoed by Dr. Teerlink to the Juneau assembly when she said that during certain periods of the year, the industry is nearly propped up by Flame and Sasha – two productive females with a high tolerance for vessel activity.
As the pressure on these animals increases, those in the industry aren’t the only ones to take notice.
“Our guests have been very vocal about what they’re seeing out on the water – the people who are coming here to enjoy this place are starting to notice how crowded it is,” said Jojo Goerner, owner of Alaska Fishing Tours, a fishing charter business out of Auke Bay. “I think what bothers us more than anything else that we see on the water is just how they surround the whales. They just totally corral them and it’s unbelievable. We know that that’s one of the main things that they’re asked not to do, but nobody is regulating it.”
Goerner said that on every single trip she led this summer, one of her guests made mention of the amount of whale watching vessels they were seeing on their way out to their fishing destination. Echoing the same sentiment, Trombly cited experiences with guests actually asking to move on after a 15th boat pulled up the same group of whales her tour was stopped on.
“Some days there’s lots of whales and they’re distributed around the tour area and the boats are able to distribute in the same way,” Dr. Teerlink said to the assembly. “It’s not uncommon for there to be upwards of 30 boats watching one whale or group of whales – of course, that includes our recreational boaters as well. We don’t know the answer to this question: is take occurring? And while we don’t know, it is possible, and it might even be intuitive, to interpret that at some point it must be.”
Defined under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a “take” is, in part, the intentional harassment of a marine mammal. Determining what counts, however, is up for interpretation.
“If you put 10 boats around a whale, you guarantee that the whale is going to pop up next to one of those boats, right? In my book, that’s intentional,” Holton said.
Add to this potential scenario the reality of a warming ocean putting added stress on the animals to feed and the situation becomes even more dire.
“My concern is that food resources are scarce and that they’re kind of constricting their habitat to where they know food is,” Dennis Fukushima, a guide on the Big Island who has guided in Juneau, said. “And then you add all these boats with these whales that are potentially starving, and are we disrupting their feeding? How many times do the bubble netters have to reset a net because a boat drifted over where the school of fish was, for example?”
Juneau is considering a cap to and possible tapering of the fleet
Unlike fishing charters or commercial fishing in general, as it stands now, there is no license or permit needed to operate a commercial whale watching tour. Discussions are ongoing between Juneau’s Visitor Industry Task Force on what permitting might look like.
“I think a cap would be great. We have permits in the fishing charter world – you must have a halibut permit to retain halibut, for example,” Goerner, the owner of Adventure Fishing Tours, said, wondering why a similar system wasn’t implemented from the get-go in the commercial whale watching industry.
Unlike the fishing charter permits, which Goerner says can cost upwards of $185,000 each, the task force mentioned creating a system where a limited number of permits can be rented and then eventually returned to the city’s Docks and Harbors department instead of bought and sold among operators themselves in an independent marketplace.
Far from a new topic of discussion, tour operators have been long preparing for an eventual cap on the fleet size.
“Every company has been trying to squeeze in as many [boats] as they can because they always think the following year is going to be the cap,” Holton said. “Then the cap doesn’t come, so they’re like, “All right, we have time to get one more in.’ It’s just like trying to get another beer before the bar closes and then the bartender just never calls last call.”
During a Juneau Assembly meeting on the topic last month, conversations were had about potential studies led by NOAA to help determine an appropriate fleet size in the event of a taper down the road. The general agreement, however, seemed to be that the city would have to grandfather in the existing fleet.
The next task force work session is on Oct. 10 and, according to its last meeting, the body is on a timeline to finalize a decision on a potential permit by the end of the calendar year. This is occurring concurrently with a proposed increase to per-passenger fees on commercial boats using Statter Harbor as a way to fund, among other projects, the replacement of the harbor’s breakwater.
Rachel Levy is a Juneau-based photojournalist whose work culminates at the intersections of environmental justice, arts and culture, and sustainable tourism. A 2022 graduate of Harvard University's Environmental Policy program, she is also the director of the award-winning documentary "Hidden in Plain Sight" that exposes the labor exploitation and colonial framework burdening Tanzania's safari industry.
