A prominent marine biologist featured on several television shows is scheduled for sentencing on Monday after pleading guilty to illegally feeding killer whales in the wild, the Porterville Recorder reported.
Nancy Black plead guilty to one count of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a misdemeanor. Federal prosecutors accused Black of feeding the whales in 2004 and 2005, in addition to altering a video tape of her interaction with the orcas and lying about it.
However, her guilty plea led prosecutors to drop all other charges and avoid jail time. Had she plead not guilty and was convicted of editing the video and lying about she, she could have faced up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.
An attorney for Black said she took a piece of gray whale blubber that was already floating in the ocean and tied it to a rope in order to record the whales eating for research.
Black, whose work has appeared on PBS, National Geographic, and Animal Planet, also runs a whale watching tour in Monterey Bay.
She has also worked on the study of whales with federal agencies like the National Marine Mammal Laboratory, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Lawrence Biegel, one of Black's attorneys, initially defended his client following her indictment over two years ago.
"In the specific incident in question, Ms. Black used an underwater camera and filmed the eating habits of killer whales who were feeding off free floating pieces of blubber from a gray whale that had been killed by a pack of killer whales," Biegel said.
"She was never hiding what she did or how she did it. In fact, she was acting with the knowledge of other marine mammal scientists, some of whom work for agencies of the federal government," he said. Biegel also claimed Black had a permit from by the federal government to perform the research.
