Has the work of marine wind turbines dealt a fatal blow to the humpback whale?

Has the work of marine wind turbines dealt a fatal blow to the humpback whale?
 
A juvenile humpback whale that washed up on an Atlantic City beach Saturday had signs of a head injury, a large hematoma just behind the blowhole, an official at the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said Monday.

“The only thing we suspect is that it was hit by a large boat,” said Sheila Dean, executive director of the Brigantine-based center. “There was a large hematoma.”

With environmental and civic groups calling for a federal investigation into whether sonar mapping related to future offshore wind turbine projects may have played a role in four recent New Jersey humpback whale deaths, Dean said it was premature to infer a cause of death.

Others noted that the National Marine Fishery Service set an unusual mortality event for humpback whales based on a mortality spike that began in 2016, before any wind energy activity began.

Dean said samples from the whale are being tested “to see what else is going on”. She said the whale was partially decomposed, which could affect how much can be determined.

The whale was the second to wash ashore in Atlantic City in 15 days. Another washed up at Strathmere on December 10 and a fourth at North Wildwood in July.

On Sunday, after the autopsy, the 30-foot whale was buried in the sand on the beach, where it washed ashore just outside the Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall. Local officials will continue to add sand to keep it from reappearing.

A coalition of groups expressing concern about the impact of upcoming wind turbines gathered there Monday afternoon at a location where Clean Ocean Action leader Cindy Zipf called “a tragic, somber welcome” to announce the coming offshore Wind turbines to smell buried whale still floating in the air.

Zipf called on the Biden administration to conduct a full investigation into whale deaths as well as the overall impact of the wind turbines, which she says will be accelerated without proper pilot testing.

“It’s too much, too fast,” she said. “It’s outrageous and our ocean deserves better.”

The groups, including community groups Project our Coast and Defend Brigantine Beach, cited six whale deaths, including two in New York, in what they described as an “unprecedented wave of whale deaths.”

They found that the companies have 11 active “random permits” from the National Marine Fisheries, which, according to Suzanne Hornick of Protect Our Coast NJ, amounts to a “license to kill.”

A spokesman for Atlantic Shores, one of two companies planning large wind farms off the coast of New Jersey, declined to comment and would not specify what seabed testing the company might conduct.

Representatives from Ørsted, the other company that had a lease to build the farms off the Jersey coast, did not immediately comment and passed all statements to an outside PR firm, Thomas Boyd Communications.

A statement on the impact of the Board of Ocean Energy Management’s wind project said there are 1,369 humpback whales in the region.

Dean of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center noted that there is still a large population of whales off the New Jersey coast because of the warmer waters, which could be a factor in the increased number of deaths.

“It’s pretty much common sense,” she said. “They are out there.”

She said it would take time for the samples to provide any information. “There’s still a lot of testing going on,” she said.

No samples were taken from the whale that washed up near the Tropicana on Dec. 23, she said, because it was a particularly cold and windy day with a possible tornado and officials decided to bury the animal quickly.

Danielle Brown, senior researcher for Gotham Whale, a whale advocacy and education group, said we’ve seen an increase in whale deaths for at least six years.

“This isn’t something that just happened in 2022 or 2023,” said Brown, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at Rutgers University.

Brown said the leading cause of whale deaths is when they collide with ships or become entangled in fishing gear.

Brown said whale numbers in the area have increased over the past decade as they follow the Menhaden schools for food. “So it makes sense that an increase in whales in the area would lead to an increase in strandings.”

Still, the recent whale kill has prompted calls to halt wind farms off the coast of New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy has set a goal of producing 11,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2040.

“We’ve worked all these years to stop ocean pollution, stop ocean dumping, stop liquefied natural gas plants, stop offshore oil drilling,” Zipf said. “And that ocean has returned so beautifully. Marine life thrives. Now we are facing a massive industrialization.”

New Jersey has approved several utility-scale offshore wind projects: Ocean Wind 1, approved by the state’s Board of Public Utilities in 2019, is owned by global company Ørsted and Public Service Enterprise Group, parent company of PSE&G – the state’s largest energy company.

Its 98 turbines would span an area 15 to 27 miles southeast of the Atlantic City shoreline and generate 1,100 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 500,000 homes. Construction has not started yet.

The BPU has approved two other wind projects: a 1,510-megawatt EDF/Shell wind farm called Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind and a 1,148-megawatt Ørsted wind farm known as Ocean Wind 2. Another project is expected to be approved in 2023.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM, last year submitted a draft environmental impact statement for the Ocean Wind 1 project, requiring tests on the impact of construction noise on whales, such as foundations for turbines.

For example, more than 10,846 beats per stack are expected at a rate of 50 beats per minute.

Bob Stern of Save Long Beach Island Inc. said the group warned the National Marine Fisheries Service a year ago that they were grossly underestimating the noise impact of these surveys on marine mammals.

Whales, mostly endangered right whales, have been used as a rallying cry for conservative and fossil fuel industry-affiliated groups opposed to offshore wind projects.

The groups, which gathered on Atlantic City Beach Monday, denied any connection to these interests and said they only accept donations from individuals.

Protect Our Coast NJ raises funds for the Ocean Environment Legal Defense Fund through its Facebook group and website. The fund is managed by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware-based group that originally began as a conservative nonprofit but now describes itself as nonpartisan.

Hornick said the institute plays no role in the group’s activities other than holding its funds.

The Heartland Institute, a national libertarian think tank, recently filed a statement with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management against an offshore wind project in Virginia “to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.”

The Heartland Institute has historically been closely associated with fossil fuel and conservative groups including Exxon Mobil, the Mercer family and Koch Industries, though it no longer discloses its funding sources, according to DeSmog, which tracks climate denial efforts.

The North Atlantic right whale is one of the most endangered whales in the world with fewer than 350 individuals. The Heartland Institute comment states that the 15-megawatt project in Virginia “would generate noise levels well in excess of the 120-decibel level that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) designates as the maximum safe operating level for underwater noise.” has”.