Editor’s Note
Since at least 2017, when North Atlantic right whale mortalities and serious injuries and illnesses spiked, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has carefully tracked marine mammal mortalities. In up-to-date tables, NOAA lists all the causes of mortalities and illnesses/injuries to right whales and humpback whales it was able to confirm, and nowhere in those data does it say wind turbines or development of these structures. The most common causes? Vessel strikes and entanglements with fishing gear.
On NOAA’s website, there are many heartbreaking recent pictures of whales plowing through the water entangled in fishing lines. Among the few causes of whale deaths that have been clearly identified as responsible for the mortalities along the Jersey coast, vessel strikes have been high up on the list.
It may be more than a coincidence that New Jersey by the end of 2022 had become the No. 1 port of call in the country for cargo ships, thanks to massive expansion by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which has seen the movement of goods climb 27% since 2019. Cargo vessels are big, and they don’t stop for whales.
What has not been proven is that preliminary wind farm construction activity, which so far has proceeded no further than location surveys, is at fault in this spate of tragic deaths.
A broad coalition of environmental organizations, including the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, agrees it’s important to discover why we’re seeing increased whale mortalities in New Jersey and elsewhere on the East Coast; however, correlating them to wind turbine site exploration is unfounded and premature. The coalition encourages more research into the potential impacts of turbines and their construction on wildlife but doesn’t believe plans for future production should be halted unless a direct correlation can be proven.