August 2, 2023 — The Biden administration appears to be scrambling for research on the conflict between wind turbines and a highly endangered whale species on the East Coast following reports of “unprecedented” whale deaths.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a regulatory body from the Department of Interior that leases offshore areas for energy development, posted a grant notice in May targeted at “addressing key information gaps in acoustic ecology of the North Atlantic Right Whales,” one of the most endangered whale species in the world.
The problem is the government has already approved offshore wind projects, and some experts are saying the attention to the whales is too little too late.
Fisherman in the region are calling the government “hypocritical” after the same federal agencies almost “regulated [them] completely out of business” in an effort to protect the endangered species without any data showing fishermem bring any harm to the right whale.