Big Green Keeps Taking A Big Bite Out of the Whale Population. It's Time to Save the Whales and Forget Offshore Wind.

The following is a consolidated version of a rather well-documented and concerning story from Climate Change Dispatch, which I recommend reading in full if, unlike our Federal government, you care about whales:

For the best part of half a century, a 41-foot humpback whale named Luna swam up and down the East Coast.

Then on Jan. 30, 2023, Luna washed up dead on Long Island, New York.

He was the tenth whale to strand on beaches in New York and New Jersey in nine weeks.Environmentalists, politicians, and ordinary citizens loudly wondered if the construction of offshore wind turbines was killing them.

Apostolos Gerasoulis, a Rutgers professor emeritus of computer science who co-created the search engine that powers Ask.com, now says the answer is yes.

‘Absolutely, 100 percent, offshore wind kills whales,’ he says…

Humpback whales migrate from the Caribbean to the Gulf of Maine and back every year, about 1,700 miles each way.

But offshore wind survey vessels have not been operating at the same level all along the route, enabling Gerasoulis to analyze data from three distinct regions of the Atlantic Ocean.

The northern region, including Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts above Rhode Island, had no offshore wind survey vessel traffic. Before 2016, an average of four humpback whales died per year, and after 2016, the average was 3.125.

‘What is significant about this result is that if ship strikes were the cause of the increase in whale deaths, this increase would have been reflected in the data,’ Gerasoulis says. ‘However, it is not.’

The southern region, including Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, had no or minimal survey traffic before 2016 and an average of two humpback whales died per year. After 2016, the average survey vessel traffic was 23,264 miles per year and the number of dead humpback whales increased to an average of 5.25 per year.

The central region, including New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, had minimal survey traffic before 2016.

After [2016], survey vessel traffic was an average of 50,300 miles per year, double the amount of the southern region. The number of humpback whale deaths also doubled, to 10.625 per year.

‘When comparing the south and central regions after offshore wind surveying started, the averages show an almost linear increase in humpback whale deaths – doubling the traffic results in doubling the whale deaths.

It is the cumulative impact of multiple offshore wind boats surveying in a small region where the whales are feeding that is affecting the whales…

These regions had identical death rates before 2016. This is the strongest correlation between whale deaths and offshore wind survey traffic.

‘The numbers never lie,’ Gerasoulis says. ‘There is a cause. We have shown that the cause for the death of the whales is offshore wind. Period.’

Offshore wind survey vessels use equipment such as multibeam echo-sounders, side-scan sonar, and sub-bottom profilers, or ‘sparkers,’ to reveal geological features of the seabed.

The sparkers send acoustical pulses into the ocean floor that are reflected to receivers on the boats.

The underwater noise is loud. On May 8, 2023, Robert Rand, a veteran acoustical consultant conducted a study of the sonar noise generated by the Miss Emma McCall survey vessel off the coast of New Jersey.

The following January, he testified at a Congressional hearing about his findings.

Rand found that the sound was 224 decibels at the source. As sound waves travel away from the source, volume diminishes. But a half nautical mile away, Rand measured peak sound levels at 151.6 decibels.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, part of NOAA, says that whales and other marine mammals can temporarily lose hearing at 152 decibels of continuous sound and can permanently lose hearing at 173 decibels.

‘There’s a saying that a deaf whale is a dead whale,’ says Trisha DeVoe, the conservation biologist.

‘Because if the whale can’t hear, it can’t see to navigate. The depths of the ocean are very dark, and they rely on their hearing to know what’s around them.’

The loud sonar blasts could also disorient the whales, she says.

‘If all of a sudden there’s this incredibly loud, disturbing noise that could even be painful to them, they’re going to run away,’ DeVoe explains.

‘So we think that it could be deafening them or causing them to flee, and then maybe putting them in harm’s way.’

DeVoe says whales are resilient animals, and NOAA should find out what is happening to them.

‘We see many whales with scars from propeller strikes or previous entanglements, yet they continue to live and thrive. If the whales are dying from ship strikes, what is suddenly causing them to be unable to avoid large ships?’ she asks.

Gerasoulis says NOAA must study the impact of multiple wind projects on marine mammals.

‘It is the cumulative impact of multiple offshore wind boats surveying in a small region where the whales are feeding that is affecting the whales,’ he says.

‘NOAA needs to investigate.’

It is more than clear at this point that off-shore wind — a financial boondoggle of immense nature — is being protected against interference from those concerned about the impacts of this activity on whales. The Feds, by any reasonable assessment, are lying about this, just as they have lied about so much else.

They are pushing corporatist climate adventures because BIg Green is powerful and funnels bIg green money into the coffers of politicians on the take who imagine the climate is perfect cloud cover for their schemes. The bureaucrats have been told to comply with the lie and, like most bureaucrats, they dutifully comply, convincing themselves they’re saving the planet by the noble lie.

#Whales #OffshoreWind #WindEnergy #Climate #Corporatism

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