In her Jan. 17 letter, Anitra Earle made several serious errors regarding the sea otter rehabili-tation program following the Valdez oil spill. As senior director, I was on site within two days after the spill. I imme-diately began hiring every avail-able expert on sea otter biology, who were flown to Alaska, housed and fed by Exxon.
As the program developed, I hired many of the people who had initially volunteered to help care for the otters. In the end, I had a staff of more than 350, who were housed, fed and given protective clothing.
It is true this program was very expensive. Much of this cost resulted from the need to build facilities rapidly in a remote part of the world. Another large expense resulted from the hiring of capture boats, many of which cost $3,000 per day, and I had 10 vessels during the height of the program.
These costs can be reduced with advanced planning, and this knowledge is being used in the creation of contingency plans and response centers in Alaska and California. But cost is not the point.
The decision was made to rescue oiled sea otters because it was the right thing to do. In this case, I had the financial backing of a large corporation that spared no expense to rescue as many otters as possible. It seems a terrible irony that Exxon is being criticized for trying too hard in its response to an unfortunate incident.
