Marine Conservationist Pleads Guilty To Illegally Feeding Orcas

A marine conservationist pleaded guilty to federal charges alleging she illegally fed killer whales in the Monterey Bay marine sanctuary in Northern California, a violation of the Marine Mammals Protection Act (MMPA).

Nancy Black, 50, admitted to federal court in San Jose that she used pieces of grey whale blubber strung on a line to lure orca to her boat in 2004 and 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"The orcas ate the blubber off the rope," Black wrote in her plea agreement, according to the Chronicle. "After the orcas consumed the blubber we had handled, we repeated the process with other pieces of floating blubber in succession."

The Monterey County Herald reports Black plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of feeding orcas in the wild, but that the plea is a huge step away from the potential felony charges she faced, which carried a potential 25-year prison sentence, up to half a million dollars in fines and the loss of her license and research vessel. Black is co-owner of a Monterey Bay whale watching outfit.

According to an account published by the Herald, after witnessing a group of orca kill a baby gray whale, black tied a piece of floating blubber to her boat with fishing line to lure the orca into a position where they could be filmed feeding with an underwater camera. Black admitted to repeating the process at least two other times.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains that the practice could alter the whales' feeding patterns in the future, according to the Herald.

The charges against Black carry a certain irony because she is also credited with helping orcas protected status from the MMPA during her days as an investigator for the NOAA, when she discovered the orca from the Pacific Northwest were migrating to the Monterey Bay because of a depleting food supply, according to Mother Nature Network. 

Black's lawyer said the settlement reached in court will result in no jail time, no loss of license and no forfeiture of Black's boat or future research opportunities.

Black will be formally sentenced Aug. 6 and will likely serve up to five years of probation and 300 hours of community services, as well a pay a fine, the Herald reports.