Saving Seafood

Ninth whale death renews calls in New Jersey to halt offshore wind projects

February 15, 2023 — A whale washed ashore in Manasquan, New Jersey, on Monday – the ninth whale found dead since early December on the New York-New Jersey shores — further stoking the debate about what’s causing the frequent mortalities along the Atlantic Coast.

“I’m currently standing on the beach a few hundred feet from the Manasquan Inlet watching yet another dead whale wash into the surf,” Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Paul Kanitra posted on Facebook on Monday. “Governor, when do these stop becoming coincidences? How many more will it take?”

What’s behind the whale mortalities has not been clearly established, but theories abound. Some local activists and officials blame offshore wind development in the region, claiming construction of the sites causes harm to marine animals. But federal officials have pushed back, saying that’s not what the evidence shows.

Read the full article at CBS News

Whales Are Dying Along the East Coast. And a Fight Is Surfacing Over Who’s to Blame

February 14, 2023 — In mid-January, threatening social media messages started showing up on the accounts of a small New Jersey organization devoted to rescuing ocean mammals that wash up on the beach. Some said “we’re watching you.” Others accused staff of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) being “whale murderers.” Some people wrote that they were going to show up at the group’s Brigantine, N.J., headquarters and “make” members of the wildlife organization “come to [their] side.” “You don’t know what they’re gonna do,” says Michele Pagel, 49, the group’s assistant director. “Are they gonna march in here and put a gun to somebody’s head?”

Staff members contacted local police, and they started locking the doors to the group’s office. In late January, someone left the door unlocked, and a man burst into the office and approached the secretary. “He just starts [yelling], ‘I want to know, I demand to know,’” says Shelia Dean, 75, the group’s director. “He was very frightening.”

Along with picking up sick baby seals and dolphins, the MMSC helps to carry out examinations on the bodies of dead whales when they wash up on the shores of New York and New Jersey in order to collect scientific data, and hopefully help determine a cause of death. And in recent months, whales have been washing up on these shores with alarming frequency. Eight large whales, including sperm whales and humpbacks, have washed up in the area since December. Those deaths have become a focal point in the clean energy culture war, with conservative media commentators blaming them on preliminary site-mapping work for offshore wind developments. But evidence to support those claims hasn’t turned up. That’s brought down the ire of many people opposed to offshore wind on small animal welfare organizations like MMSC for supposedly hiding the truth of what killed those whales.

The work to actually examine those carcasses is grueling and tedious. It involves sourcing backhoes or other construction equipment to maneuver the school bus-sized animals, taking measurements, and then, when possible, undertaking difficult necropsies. A trailer parked in front of the MMSC’s offices houses the necessary equipment: smocks and boots, along with large knives and hooks for pulling off layers of cetacean skin and blubber to examine the animal and take tissue samples. It’s a messy, smelly business. In humpback whales, gasses from the whale’s putrefying innards often begin to swell the sack under the whale’s mouth. If it bursts, it can splatter anyone standing nearby with whale guts. If a whale had broken bones from being hit by a ship, for instance, the necropsy can help examiners tell if the ship strike occurred before or after the whale died. MMSC and other groups that collaborate on the necropsies then forward that information to the federal government, which provides some of their funding.

Read the full article at Yahoo News

An unusually high number of whales are washing up on U.S. beaches

February 6, 2023 — Researchers are trying to figure out a mystery: Why are so many humpback whales, right whales, and other large mammals dying along the U.S. East Coast? One possible explanation is a shift in food habits. And while theories are circulating that blame the growing offshore wind industry, scientists say there’s no proof to support that idea.

Since Dec. 1, at least 18 reports have come in about large whales being washed ashore along the Atlantic Coast, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. The losses are hitting populations that were already under watch, due to ongoing rises in unexpected deaths.

“Unfortunately, it’s been a period of several years where we have had elevated strandings of large whales, but we are still concerned about this pulse” in deaths that’s now been going on for weeks, as Sarah Wilkin, the coordinator for the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, said on a recent call with journalists.

Read the full article NPR

NEW JERSEY: 12 Jersey Shore mayors call for moratorium on offshore wind following whale deaths

January 31, 2023 — A group of Jersey Shore mayors are calling for an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind energy development until federal and state scientists can assure the public that ocean noise related to underwater seabed mapping, soil borings and other turbine construction activities poses no threat to whales.

The announcement followed news that another humpback whale had died off of the coasts of New Jersey and New York and washed ashore in Lido Beach, Nassau County, New York, according to numerous reports.

“While we are not opposed to clean energy, we are concerned about the impacts these (offshore wind) projects may already be having on our environment,” the 12 New Jersey mayors wrote in a joint letter to Washington officials.

The mayors include six from Ocean and Monmouth counties: Joseph Mancini of Long Beach Township, Samuel Cohen of Deal, Paul M. Kanitra of Point Pleasant Beach, William W. Curtis of Bay Head, Lance White of Mantoloking, and Jennifer Naughton of Spring Lake.

Read the full article at MSN.com

NEW JERSEY: A Battle Over Wind and Whales Is Brewing in New Jersey

January 20, 2023 — Several New Jersey environmental groups are defending offshore wind development after seven dead humpback and sperm whales washed up along New York and New Jersey coasts in the past month.

Last week, environmental group Clean Ocean Action called for a pause in ocean-floor preparation work for future wind projects. The group and other supporters called on President Joe Biden to investigate the recent whale deaths recorded in New Jersey and New York. “The federal government should have been here with busloads of people really doing an examination if they were taking this seriously,” Cindy Zipf, the executive director of Clean Ocean Action, told NJ.com.

Read the full article at Gizmodo

Whale incidents raise pressure on offshore wind advocates

January 17, 2023 — Another dead humpback whale washed ashore on a New Jersey beach – apparently struck by a vessel – brought renewed demands from local critics of offshore wind projects to halt survey work.

Meanwhile an entangled right whale spotted off North Carolina – and the discovery of a dead right whale calf near shore – added pressure for the federal government to do more to protect that highly endangered species.

The ongoing protests from wind project opponents did not sway New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat whose administration strongly backs offshore wind development. Murphy said Friday he did not think work on the state’s Ocean Wind 1 and Atlantic Shores projects should be suspended as critics demanded.

Two days earlier, Murphy announced that Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind LLC had signed a letter of intent with the state Economic Development Authority to lease and develop 35 acres of land at the New Jersey Wind Port, to be a construction base for its 1.5-gigawatt project planned off Long Beach Island.

The nearly 33-foot long humpback whale was reported late in the afternoon Thursday, Jan. 12 at Brigantine, N.J., a few miles north from where two dead humpbacks beached at Atlantic City two weeks apart in December.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Calls mount to stop offshore wind project as more whales wash up dead: ‘Need to take a very hard look at this’

January 17, 2023 — Lawmakers, fishermen and marine activists are calling for an investigation into whether offshore wind projects are killing marine life after a recent spate of dead whales washing up along the New Jersey-New York coastline.

Seafreeze fisheries liaison Meghan Lapp told Fox News that the Biden administration’s initiative to build wind farms to combat climate change could be threatening the lives of whales as an increasing number have turned up dead in various states across the country.

“I can’t authoritatively say that all off the whales that are washing up are because of offshore wind farms. But what I can tell you is that the seven whales that washed up off New Jersey in the past month have all washed up during intense geotechnical surveying of wind farm leases off of New Jersey,” Lapp said Friday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Read the full article at Fox News

NEW JERSEY: No pause in wind farm prep after 7th dead whale

January 17, 2023 — New Jersey’s governor said Friday he does not think undersea preparations for offshore wind farms should be halted in response to a recent spate of whale deaths in New Jersey and New York.

Democrat Phil Murphy spoke after lawmakers at the local, state and federal levels called for a temporary pause in ocean floor preparation work for offshore wind projects in New Jersey and New York after another dead whale washed ashore in the area.

Also on Friday, most of New Jersey’s environmental groups warned against linking offshore wind work and whale deaths, calling such associations “unfounded and premature.”

The death was the seventh in a little over a month. The spate of fatalities prompted an environmental group and some citizens groups opposed to offshore wind to ask President Biden earlier this week for a federal investigation into the deaths.

The latest death Thursday was that of a 20- to 25-foot-long (6- to 7.6-meter-long) humpback whale. Its remains washed ashore in Brigantine, just north of Atlantic City, which itself has seen two dead whales on its beaches in recent weeks.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

NEW JERSEY: Following the clues to why more beached whales along Jersey Shore

January 13, 2023 — This whale was bound to draw attention.  

Unlike a similar one that washed up a month ago in Strathmere, a sleepy barrier island hamlet in Cape May County, this 33.5-foot female humpback rolled ashore on Saturday morning on Atlantic City’s downtown beach. Twenty-four hours later, its carcass, by then dozed up to the edge of the dunes, where it would soon be buried, was surrounded by small plastic campaign signs imploring onlookers to “Protect Our Coast: Stop the industrialization of our oceans.”  

The placards, colored in red, white and blue, were a clear indication that the whale was now a reeking lightning rod for a growing anti-wind farm movement in South Jersey. But, say experts, the stranded whales highlight the complex ecology of the species and the busy waters in which they live, and that not one factor is to blame but many — some of which even they still don’t fully understand.  

The whale was the sixth to wash up dead or dying on New Jersey and New York beaches in 33 days. Two — an adult female humpback and a female sperm whale — appeared on Long Island shorelines in early December. In New Jersey, an infant sperm whale was discovered in Keansburg, Monmouth County, in early December, while the three other strandings, all humpbacks, were in South Jersey. Saturday’s incident was the second in Atlantic City in two weeks; a similar sized humpback washed up not far away on Dec. 23. In July, a 25-foot humpback also beached in North Wildwood. 

On Monday, standing before a podium set up on the sand, directly above where Saturday’s humpback was buried, the smell of decomposition still hanging in the air, Clean Ocean Action’s executive director, Cindy Zipf, announced that the advocacy group, along with others, had prepared a letter to President Joseph Biden, calling on him “to take immediate steps to address this alarming and environmentally harmful trend.” 

“Clean Ocean Action has been working to protect these waters for about the last 40 years, and never have we ever heard of six whales washing up within 33 days,” Zipf said. “The only thing different this year than in the past years is the enormous amount of offshore preconstruction and development activities occurring by the offshore wind industry.” 

Read the full article at NJ Spotlight News

Advocates advance ways for safeguarding East Coast whales

October 4, 2019 — Humpback whales are dying all along the East Coast, though advocates say “smart” buoys, slower ship speeds and fishing gear that breaks apart might have saved them.

Ships and entanglements are two of the most clearly identified killers, scientists say.

“You’d be surprised at how many animals are out there with propeller scars,” said Arthur H. Kopelman, president, Coastal Research & Education Society of Long Island, a West Sayville nonprofit that conducts research and offers whale-watching.

Humpbacks and fin whales “come right up under the bow” of whale-watching ships, he says, luckily when the engines are in neutral, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requires.

Read the full story at Newsday