What we have been witnessing at the Jersey Shore since December of 2022 has never been seen before in our lifetime. There have been four whales washed ashore in a 10 mile stretch of our coast in South Jersey and another four in the mid-Atlantic region in the last 40 days. Eight total dead whales that have washed up in 40 days. Completely unprecedented.
The major difference in the waters off local shores? Investigations related to the wind farms being proposed as close as 9 miles off of Brigantine Beach. These investigations consist of utilizing sonar technology to map the ocean floor and geotechnical work drilling into the ocean floor. These activities result in additional vessels, sonar, sounds and vibrations as close as 9 miles to our shore.
As the deaths continued to mount, I called for a temporary stop to this activity to give us some time to determine what is affecting these whales. A stop to these activities seems like the responsible thing to do given the situation.
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The snarky response from partisan hacks was predictable and way too customary in this society. Republicans are anti-business and against offshore wind they screamed, even though I never said such a thing.
The response from some of the state’s leading environmental groups — most prominently the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club — was more puzzling. This issue of humpback whale deaths has been studied since 2016 as an Unknown Mortality Event, they reasoned, and the NOAA concluded that no whales have died as a result of offshore wind activity. Kind of odd to make that argument since we all know if a direct link had been found the plug would have been pulled on this work long ago. The fact that the state’s leading environmental groups want to blindly plow forward despite eight dead whales makes me wonder what is motivating them. Can you imagine if we were drilling for oil 9 miles off our shores and eight dead whales washed up? These same groups would be protesting to end the activity immediately and forever.
But it was the editorial from The Press of A.C., “Factors in NJ and NY whale deaths becoming clearer,” that got me choking on my coffee in the morning. To put in writing that “almost nothing is being done yet out in the ocean” is just not accurate. Ships with names like the Regulus and the Voyager are offshore drilling, testing and utilizing sonar technology that I think could affect whales. That a respected news organization would make a misleading statement like that resulted in an early email to the editor who suggested the guest commentary you are hopefully now reading. The Press editorial also raises a number of good points and several hypotheses which may or may not be true. I think that sums up the point — no one knows definitely what it is affecting these whales so severely and it is why we must do everything we can to determine the cause.
One of the hypotheses is that since the wind farms off the coast are so close the whales are being pushed in towards the shore to avoid the activity. Whether the migration affects their feeding patterns, gets them disoriented, increases conflicts with other vessels, or they simply get too close to the shore is a concern that many people share. It certainly seems possible given the cluster of deaths in this area that whales are simply trying to avoid the disruption in their natural environment. No one has concluded that this is the case, but it must be ruled out so that we aren’t risking additional whale deaths and damage to the entire marine ecosystem.
So I stand by the call to temporarily suspend all work over our shores for a period of 30 days.
In this time frame, we can complete full necropsies on the whales so that we have a better understanding of what happened to them.
We can also get full transparency from all of these offshore wind companies on what they were doing, where they were doing it, and when they were doing it since October 1, 2022.
This data and analysis will give us much more clarity than what we have today and hopefully will allow us to work together with our state and federal partners to prevent further damage.
Thirty days of data collection, study and analysis seems reasonable, responsible and required when faced with this unprecedented Unknown Mortality Event.
