Whales have been washing up dead on beaches since prehistoric times. Signs of human-caused injuries are a more recent phenomenon, with strikes by ships and entanglements with fishing gear among the causes.
In recent years, another theory has surfaced that has tried to shift the blame for those deaths to something new: the development of offshore wind power.
But those claims simply aren’t true, according to government officials and whale scientists. Offshore wind turbines, and the electricity they generate, are not killing whales.
“There is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths,” Paulina Huanca, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, a federal agency that regulates protections for marine species, said last week. “There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities. NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate and has not authorized — or proposed to authorize — death or serious injury of whales for any wind-related action.”
Despite such lack of evidence, speculative claims still crop up on social media whenever a dead whale floats to shore on the East Coast.
Media reports have sought to dispel the idea that offshore wind power is the culprit, with limited success.
While all whales are protected by federal law, as are all marine mammals and turtles, the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale tops the list of species that scientists and regulators are concerned about. Right whales were nearly hunted to extinction before whaling was banned, and now are believed to have an approximate population of only 360 individual animals, according to federal regulators.
Maine lobstermen, who for years have been targeted by whale advocates who say that fishing gear poses an entanglement threat to right whales, are among those who have been most skeptical of offshore wind development. They face strict gear modification mandates, though only two whales ever have been known to have been entangled in their ropes, and they say offshore wind power developers are not being held to the same standard.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the largest fishing industry advocacy group in the state, opposes wind power development in the Gulf of Maine. MLA officials have not alleged that the technology has killed whales. But they have called for improved scientific research and data to determine population estimates of whales and the impacts on them from underwater noise generated by wind development and turbines.
Jessica Redfern, an ocean conservation scientist with New England Aquarium in Boston, said that entanglement in fishing gear in the U.S and Canada and ship strikes are the two biggest known threats to whales.
But whales still are expected to be affected by wind power development on the East Coast, she said. Even without evidence that offshore wind poses a lethal threat, development should proceed cautiously so that the impacts on whales can be monitored, she said.
“We need to know everything we can,” Redfern said.
Wind power developers use underwater sound surveys to find suitable ocean bottom for mounting turbines in the relatively shallow waters off southern New England and mid-Atlantic states, she said. But such surveys use lower volumes and higher frequencies than the sonar testing used for oil and gas exploration, and so have less of an impact on marine life, she said.
Still, those surveys and vibrations from turbines could push whales out of project areas or affect behavior in other ways, Redfern said. The animals might be stressed, or the prey they feed upon could be harder to find, or they could encounter increased ship traffic from vessels servicing the turbines.
In the Gulf of Maine, where floating turbines are expected to be tethered to the ocean floor, sound surveys and pile driving won’t be an issue, but the entanglement risk posed by the anchor lines could be, she said.
“It’s a whole new system. The risks are going to be different,” Redfern said.
There could be other impacts too. Offshore turbines, however they’re fixed to the ocean floor, could create eddies in the passing currents or serve as artificial reefs, she added. Scientists should closely monitor the impacts from projects such as South Fork, between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard, so that regulators and developers can determine what those impacts are and possibly mitigate them as more projects come forward, she said.
“There’s a lot out there,” Redfern said.
As for the misleading claims about whales dying from offshore wind development, some environmental groups are laying the blame on the oil industry, which likely would see its earnings decline if renewable power companies in the wind and solar sectors carve out a bigger share of the energy market.
The Conservation Law Foundation, which has gone to court to try to better protect whales from ship strikes, says the oil industry has funded groups that are opposed to offshore wind development in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Citing investigations by Brown University, the foundation said Monday that those groups have overstated the degree to which offshore wind is expected to affect whales.
Echoing Redfern, foundation officials said that the continued widespread use of fossil fuels and their effects on the global climate poses a significantly greater threat to whales and countless other species than offshore wind power development.
“The most significant threat to whales and a healthy ocean is climate change, just as the most significant threat to human health and the vitality of our communities is climate change,” said Kate Sinding Daly, an official with the foundation. “The reality is, we need to quadruple the clean energy coming into New England to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels so we can have a clean, safe, and healthy environment for future generations. Offshore wind is a critical component of that.”
