A Californian gray whale was harpooned and shot at the weekend, dying many hours later. Five Makah tribal members were detained as the kill was conducted without permission from the Makah tribal government.

Possibilities being investigated are whether it was illegally hunted, or the whale was harpooned and shot in a humane attempt to kill it after it had become entangled in fishing net and couldn't be cut loose. However according to witnesses, the gray whale had been harpooned off Seal and Sail rocks, which are about 2½ miles east of Neah Bay. They said they saw five men on two small boats and that shots were fired at the whale with what sounded like a high-caliber rifle. The Coast Guard declined to name the men, and Makah Public Safety, the tribe's police department, declined to confirm if anyone has been arrested. The whale's death is under investigation by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which enforces the nation's whaling moratorium.

The Makah tribe is seeking a waver of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and are the only tribe in the USA with a treaty specifying a right to hunt whales.

In 1999, the Makah tribe exercised its right to hunt whales and in May of this year , more than a dozen representatives from the tribe attended the International Whaling Commission meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on behalf of a petition to renew the tribes' quota of 20 whales in five years. The IWC renewed the tribe's quota, a prerequisite for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service to review the environmental impact of its whaling waver application. Tribal members at the time said the environmental review could take between two and three years.

The recent kill by a Makah tribal member was the first for over seven years and Huu-ay-aht Chief Councillor Robert Dennis said his people consider the whale hunt an aboriginal right as they hunted whales for centuries. However, Makah tribal leaders have since promised to prosecute the five men who took it upon themselves to hunt the whale.