Three whale carcasses washed ashore on the North Atlantic coast along New York and New Jersey this month over the span of less than a week, generating concern among local residents and wildlife activists about the deaths, as well as why and what can be done.
“This is an excessive amount,” Trisha DeVoe, a conservation biologist, told The Epoch Times. “The average amount of whales we lose in a year is seven. This year, we’ve lost 24 in eight months in the New York–New Jersey area.”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there have been 65 large whale deaths along the U.S. East Coast since Dec. 1, 2022.
“Humpback whales come into our area during their northern migration and spend on average 37 days off our coast,” said Ms. DeVoe, who gives tours with Miss Belmar Whale Watching, which also collects data to contribute to the NYC Humpback Whale Catalog.
While on a tour, Ms. DeVoe, who is also a stranding volunteer with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, New Jersey, and her crew saw the whale that had been given the name “Saint” dead in the water before 2 p.m., and by 5 p.m., the currents were pushing him ashore.
Scientifically identified as NYC0260, Saint had been documented off the coast of New Jersey since the summer of 2022, she said.
Whales are identified by the patterns on the underside of their tail flukes, Ms, DeVoe said.
“It’s a lot like a human fingerprint in that no two are the same.”
Saint was named for where he was initially seen, near St. Michaels Church and San Alfonso Retreat House, which overlook the ocean in Long Branch, Ms. DeVoe said.
In October 2022, toward the end of whale-watching season before they migrate south for the winter, Saint suffered a vessel strike that severed half of his tail fluke, she said.
“We did not know how his tail would heal or if he would even survive this serious injury,” she said. “All we could do is wait and pray that he would be OK.”
To their relief, that next summer, she said, he showed up back at the Jersey shore.
“He was observed numerous times engaging in normal humpback behaviors like breaching and lunge feeding,” Ms. DeVoe said. “It was obvious that he had completely recovered from his injury and was healthy and thriving.”
She last saw Saint alive on a whale-watching tour in July, she said.
“Two and a half weeks later, we saw Saint again on our whale-watching trip, but this time, he was no longer healthy and thriving,” Ms. DeVoe said. “Tragically, his lifeless body was floating about 2 miles offshore.”
‘It’s Not Normal’
The official story as to the cause of death given by organizations such as NOAA, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, and the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society is that whale deaths are generally caused by vessel strikes. However, people such as Ms. DeVoe and ocean advocate Mike Dean are asking is why whales are suddenly unable to navigate the waters that they’ve been navigating for decades without hitting boats.“It’s not normal,” Ms. DeVoe said. “There are a lot of questions about what’s causing these whales to die.”
Currently, a total of 3,500 wind turbines are proposed for construction across 2.2 million acres of ocean along the East Coast.
One of the 28 projects is called the Atlantic Shore Offshore Wind development, a joint venture between Shell New Energies US, LLC, and EDF-RE Offshore Development, LLC, itself a subsidiary of EDF Renewables North America.
Atlantic Shores has more than 400 acres of three offshore wind areas under development, with two of them located off the coast of southern New Jersey between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light, and a third offshore lease area in the New York Bight—a triangular area that extends northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island.
High-resolution geophysical technology is used to survey the ocean floor for the future construction of these turbines.
This seismic equipment is sending out frequencies that some believe are blasting the whales and dolphins with loud sounds that have resulted in their disorientation and inability to traverse the waters as safely as they had before.
Officials deny the link.
However, as Ms. DeVoe pointed out, these surveying companies apply for incidental take authorizations, which, according to NOAA, allow for the unintentional “take” of marine mammals incidental to construction projections, scientific expeditions, oil and gas development, and military exercises.
The Marine Mammals Protection Act defines “take” as “to harass, hunt, capture, or kill, or attempt to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal.”
In response to the officials who say the correlation between the whale deaths and the surveying is speculative, Ms. DeVoe asked, “If there’s no connection, then why do they need a permit to cause harm? Could they have underestimated the extent of the harm?”
‘No Evidence’
When he heard about Saint’s death, Mr. Dean went to the beach in Long Branch to document the incident, taking photos and video.He works with several organizations in opposition to the industrialization of the coastal waters and—as whale deaths have increased—has observed how officials are starting to lose their grip on the narrative.
Locals are aware of the presence of offshore surveying, while at the same time, they’re aware that whales are dying at a rate never before witnessed, Mr. Dean said.
Despite what the official statement is with each death, he said, the public has become more distrustful of the statements and news reports and, for the most part, rely more on their own intuition and opinion.
There’s been a shift in the belief that there’s not enough evidence to prove the connection to an acceptance that, maybe, there isn’t enough evidence to disprove the connection.
“How many times does a dead whale have to hit our shores before we get convinced that this activity in the ocean may be the cause?” Mr. Dean asked. “In my view, the ‘no evidence’ answer has worn out its welcome.”
‘Thrown to the Wind’
Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger told The Hill that there are two reasons for the whale deaths.“The first is there’s boat traffic in areas where there has not historically been boat traffic, and we know that whales tend to hide from the boats,” said Mr. Shellenberger, who worked on the documentary “Thrown to the Wind,” which was released on Aug. 15.
“They know that they’re a threat, and they avoid them, and so when you add new boat traffic to areas previously trafficked, you’re going to get more boat strikes, which are one of the leading causes of death if not the leading cause of death.”
The second mechanism, Mr. Shellenberger said, is the sonar mapping of the ocean floor and the eventual pile driving to build the turbines.
“The whales run away from those sounds; they are frightened of those sounds,” he said.
Mothers and their calves are split apart by the noise and scattered into places where there aren’t as many fish for feeding,” Mr. Shellenberger said.
Overly fatigued from fleeing the noise, the whales can migrate into heavily trafficked areas, where they are then struck by boats, he said.
“The government has been saying that they are researching this, and we have shown that they either have not been researching it, or they’ve been researching it and discovered what we’ve discovered, which means they’ve been covering it up,” he said. “Either of which is a scandal because they’ve been reassuring the public that they’ve been looking into this.”
Mr. Shellenberger said that his Facebook post linking whale deaths to wind turbine development had been censored with a FactCheck.org article that relied on government sources claiming that there’s no evidence.
Whales’ Contribution to Carbon Cycle
Ms. DeVoe started the organization Save Our Whales Now in response to the whale strandings.“I felt it was crucial to educate people about whales and why it’s so important to protect them,” she said.
Whales are known to be a carbon sink, which is any organism, plant, or element that absorbs more carbon than it produces, such as trees, the forest, and the ocean, which in turn facilitates the balance of the carbon cycle.
In their lifespan—which can exceed 85 years—large whales accumulate up to 32 tons of carbon dioxide in their body. When they die, they sink, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere and to the bottom of the ocean, where it stays for centuries, Ms. DeVoe said.
Rich in iron, whale feces provide nutrients for other fish, as well as fertilizer for plant life such as phytoplankton, which produces 50 percent of the oxygen humans breathe, she said.
“Every other breath we take is because of the ocean, and phytoplankton removes approximately 40 percent of all the CO2 produced in the entire world, which is the equivalent of 1.7 million trees, or four Amazon rain forests,” Ms. DeVoe said.
Because of the whaling industry, many large whales are still endangered, she said.
“It’s estimated that we only have about 25 to 30 percent of the whales we once had,” she said. “We’ve wiped out 75 percent of a resource that helped keep our atmosphere clean, and now we’re killing off what’s left.”
There’s a glaring irony here: Those advocating for wind energy do so under the banner of fighting climate change by reducing greenhouse gases.
Cries to pause development to determine the true cause of the whale deaths, Ms. DeVoe said, are falling on deaf ears.
Government Response
In January, lawmakers such as New Jersey state Sen. Vince Polistina, a Republican, called for a halt to offshore wind development when a seventh whale died in under a month.“We should suspend all work related to offshore wind development until we can determine the cause of death of these whales, some of which are endangered,” Mr. Polistina said. “The work related to offshore wind projects is the primary difference in our waters, and it’s hard to believe that the death of (seven) whales on our beaches is just a coincidence.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said that although the deaths are tragic, stopping the development isn’t necessary, according to The Associated Press.
“They have said it’s been happening at an increased rate since 2016, and that was long before there was any offshore wind activity,” Mr. Murphy said.
“Sub-bottom profiling, high resolution geophysical (HRG) surveys were alive and well beginning in 2015, with at least four sets of surveys taking place,” Ms. Brady said.
She pointed to 2015 and 2016 seismic survey reports off the coast of Delaware and Maryland filed on behalf of US Wind Inc.; a 2016 survey south of Massachusetts filed by Dong Energy (now Orsted); 2016 surveys in Massachusetts filed by Vineyard Wind; and an ITA request for the Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island dating back to 2014.
With the Biden administration’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which offers tax incentives to the wind industry, this surveying only increased.
In July, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan congressional watchdog agency, agreed to investigate the effects of offshore wind development amid the surge of wildlife deaths.
‘We Can’t Afford to Lose Any More Whales’
Meanwhile, organizations, corporations, and politicians maintain that there’s no evidence that whales are dying because of geological surveying.“But there’s a lot of evidence of whales continuing to die, and every time they’ve died, companies have been doing surveying work,” Ms. DeVoe said. “At what point do you say, ‘This might not be a coincidence anymore?' No one knows for sure, but let’s take a pause to figure it out because we can’t afford to lose any more whales.”
