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Why are so many whales dying on the Jersey Shore?

Some groups point to a wind farm in its early stages, but so far there’s no real evidence linking that project to the deaths.

Why are so many whales dying on the Jersey Shore?
[Photos: Nicolas Jooris-Ancion/iStock/Getty Images Plus, Velvetfish/iStock/Getty Images Plus, AndrewJohnson/Getty Images]

When a 20-foot-long humpback whale washed up on a beach in Brigantine, New Jersey, on January 13, it was the ninth whale to be stranded on the nearby coastline within six weeks.

Some New Jersey politicians, and a local nonprofit called Clean Ocean Action, pointed to Ocean Wind 1, a large wind farm off the coast, and argued that it and other offshore wind projects in the area should be put on hold. (Tucker Carlson picked up the story and called wind farms the “DDT of our times.”) But officials say there’s no evidence that the wind farm—which is still in the early research stages, with teams surveying the area but not undertaking any construction—had anything to do with the deaths.

Unfortunately, the problem isn’t new. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration first declared an official “unusual mortality event” for humpback whales in 2016, when the number of deaths on the East Coast more than doubled from the average in previous years. The high death rate continued over several subsequent years.

Since 2016, 178 humpback whales have died along the Atlantic coast. Scientists were able to examine around half of the animals; 40% of those showed signs of dying either from being hit by a ship or getting entangled in fishing gear. (In other cases, sometimes because the whales were too badly decomposed, it wasn’t possible to determine the cause of death.) Other whale species, including minke and the endangered North Atlantic right whale, are also dying at alarming rates.

In the most recent series of deaths, preliminary exams done on two whales suggest they died after colliding with ships. (Other exams with lab partners are ongoing.) At the proposed offshore wind site, some work is underway to survey the area and test the soil where wind turbines could be installed. But whenever survey work happens, independent observers have to be on the ship to watch for marine animals and call for a stop when they’re in the area.

Ørsted, the Danish company working on the project, says no ship strikes have happened with its vessels. The surveying equipment, including sonar mapping and drilling into the seafloor, does make noise, and work is also happening at other proposed wind projects in the area. But NOAA says the activity is unlikely to be killing whales.

“There are no historical stranding events that have been associated with use of systems like these,” Benjamin Laws of the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources said in a recent press briefing. The technology is widely used around the world, including in Denmark, where thousands of offshore wind turbines are in place.

Instead, it’s likely that at least some of the whales are dying because they’re in a crowded shipping route and fishing area. The problem may be exacerbated by warming oceans, as fish move into new areas and whales follow, sometimes coming closer to the shore.

“We’ve seen this reported at the Jersey Shore—a lot more whales later in the season,” says Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “That’s good for whale watching, but not good for reducing mortality from ship strikes.”

Changing shipping routes and requiring ships and boats to slow down could help. NOAA has put in place seasonal “speed zones” for large ships in areas where endangered right whales are present, along with a voluntary slow zone; last year the agency proposed expanding restrictions to smaller vessels. Studies suggest that if ships reduce their speed to 10 knots, a collision with a whale may be as much as 90% less likely to be fatal. The same speed limits could help other species. Still, ships often ignore the rules, and the fishing industry has fought against restrictions.

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New fishing equipment could also make a difference. Instead of using traps with vertical lines that can entangle whales, the industry could use ropeless “on-demand” technology with remote sensors that trigger buoys to float to the surface when the trap is full. The tech is currently in use in Canada and on the West Coast of the U.S., and the nonprofit International Fund for Animal Welfare is testing it with some fishermen on the East Coast.

Some advocates argue that the ropeless equipment should be required, particularly to have any chance of saving right whales before they’re extinct; only a few hundred remain, and only a fraction of those are breeding females. “The fishing industry doesn’t like to be told to change the way it does business,” O’Malley says. “But in this case, it really is critical to make sure that we’re not just doing business as usual, because fishing entanglements are one of the largest sources of whale mortality.”

Clean Ocean Action, the nonprofit that has argued for a pause in the coastal New Jersey wind farm’s development, includes fishing groups in its coalition of organizations. (It’s worth noting that the fishing industry has also opposed wind projects because they restrict the areas where they can work, and could reduce hauls.) Yet despite its professed concern for whales, Clean Ocean Action hasn’t advocated for vessel speed limits or changes in fishing gear. It says that there should be a bigger investigation of offshore wind projects, since NOAA hasn’t definitively ruled out a link to the uptick in whale deaths.

But multiple other nonprofits, including the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and Natural Resources Defense Council, argue that it’s critical not to delay the wind project, since climate change is also a major threat to whales and wind is an ideal source of renewable energy for the area.

“The biggest threat to the ocean ecosystem is climate change and rising ocean temperatures. . . . Offshore wind remains one of the best ways for the East Coast to green our electric grid,” O’Malley says. “Solar is important. Energy storage is important. Energy efficiency is important. But in terms of what’s generating pure megawatts of energy, offshore wind has the greatest potential.”