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September 15, 2023

There has been an alarming, “mysterious“ rise in whale deaths in the Northeast, coinciding with a massive, subsidized buildout of offshore wind farms. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA,) the federal organization ultimately responsible for reporting on and protecting whales, asserts there is no link between wind farm development and whale deaths.

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At the same time, NOAA now issues expedited whale “take,” or harm and kill permits, to wind companies. The likely “link” between deaths and NOAA permits—deafening and disorienting acoustic pulses generated for sub-seafloor seismic surveying and construction—is commonly acknowledged by marine mammal biologists and undersea acousticians, yet it is now publicly ignored or suppressed. The price of these absurdities may include the imminent extinction of the North Atlantic right whale.

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore describes the current Northeast US whale migration pathway as a “death zone.” For example, since 2016, the starting year of the most recent “Unusual Mortality Events” for whales, over 200 Humpbacks have beached or stranded.

The year 2016 also marked the beginning of a frenzied, subsidized buildout of offshore wind in the Northeast US. Today, as pre-construction surveying and build-out of new turbines promised by the Executive branch continues, dolphins and whales are found beached or floating lifeless offshore on an almost daily basis. Many animals are never found, are never reported, or are only documented informally. This cetacean die-off threatens the last of 340 remaining North Atlantic right whales, including as few as 70 reproductive females.

Image by Ken Swope.

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While disavowing any connection between wind development and whale harm, NOAA now expedites authorizing “incidental” whale harassment and “take” by wind companies. While killing of whales is illegal, there are exceptions. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) of 1972, take or harassment and possible killing, is prohibited, but “provided certain findings are made, NOAA Fisheries may issue incidental take authorizations allowing the unintentional “take” of marine mammals incidental to specified activities, including construction projects.

“Take,” under the MMPA, “is defined as the intent to harm, harass, or kill a marine mammal, in its simplest terms,” says NOAA’s Mendy Garron, Acting Communications Director at NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office. NOAA stipulates, “Incidental take is an unintentional, but not unexpected, impact to a marine mammal that can range from a non-minor behavioral response, to an injury, to a mortality.” The deaths are not intended but expected.

NOAA acknowledges the impact of human-generated noise on whales, but officially rejects the effects of wind farm development. Benjamin Laws, deputy chief for permits and construction at NOAA, stated, “we do not have evidence that would support the connection between the [wind] survey work and these recent stranding events or any stranding events in the last several years.”

NOAA attributes deaths to “human interaction,” specifically ship-strike or fishing gear entanglement. These causes are more easily discovered in necropsies than internal organ (hearing) damage. (According to NOAA, many whales are significantly decomposed by the time they are discovered.) NOAA blames fishing and ships, except for offshore wind survey ships.

But powerful sound waves can harm both toothed and baleen whales. Whale strandings have been linked to hearing damage and disorientation from high-intensity, low-frequency sonar pulses like those used in wind farm pre-construction surveys. In 2015, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reported, “we now know that intense sound waves can have direct physiological impacts on whales, including internal hemorrhaging.”

For creatures who navigate using sound, vessel strikes, entanglement, and hearing damage are not mutually exclusive causes of death.