Mammal experts have found no evidence that a series of whale deaths on the New Jersey shore in recent months are related to preliminary undersea testing for offshore wind (OSW) projects, speakers told a New Jersey legislative committee May 18.

Several of the speakers who addressed the Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said there’s clearly more whale activity on the New Jersey shore now than a few decades ago. But why that is and how it is linked to the deaths requires careful and lengthy scientific analysis, which has yet to be completed.

“In all cases, including those animals in which evidence of ship strike was found, the pathology results are still pending,” said Sheila Dean, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC), of Brigantine, N.J. She said the organization is investigating the deaths under a permit from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, and the work is ongoing.

“This means that the final cause of death has not been determined,” she said. “To assign blame before the scientific data is analyzed, interpreted would be premature.”

Of nine whale deaths under scrutiny, three were floating out at sea, so the MMSC could do little in the way of analysis, she said. The organization did necropsies on the remaining six, she said.

Historically, studies have shown that whale injuries and deaths on the East Coast are commonly the result of being hit by ships, becoming entangled in cables or fishing nets or being felled by disease, speakers told the committee.

Danielle Brown, lead humpback whale researcher for Gotham Whale, a New York City-based advocacy organization, said whale sightings in the New York Harbor began to increase around 2011, and strandings began escalating soon after.

“The most recent mortality event may have begun in 2016,” she said, referring to the pattern of deaths. “But strandings and interactions between humpback whales and human activities have been on the rise long before that.”

The difficulty in understanding whale activities and their interactions with humans is that data is scarce, she said.

“Ultimately, the takeaway here is that things are changing rapidly in New Jersey, especially when it comes to humpback whales, and there are many data gaps,” she said. “These whales are now a consistent part of our ecosystem.”

OSW Moratorium

The hearings were triggered by the persistent suspicion raised by some project opponents that the whale deaths are somehow tied to offshore wind projects. No construction has begun on any New Jersey shore wind projects, and the developer of the first project, Ørsted, is conducting only preparatory sea floor analysis.

Ørsted’s 1,100-MW Ocean Wind 1, which is the state’s first offshore wind project and was approved in 2019, is scheduled to begin construction next year. The state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) subsequently approved two more projects, the 1,148-MW Ocean Wind II and 1,510-MW Atlantic Shores, in the state’s second solicitation in 2021. (See NJ Awards Two Offshore Wind Projects.)  

The projects have faced opposition from the tourism and fishing industries, as well as some residents, who are concerned about the impact and fear turbines will mar the view of the sea and deter visitors. The commercial fishing sector fears they will not be able to fish as much in the areas they work at present.

The whale deaths have provided opponents with another issue to raise. Republican Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith in March held a hearing on the issue. Van Drew has called for a moratorium on the OSW project development while the whale deaths are investigated.

The issue was one of many raised by Cape May County in a resolution passed May 23 stating that the county “objects to and opposes” Ørsted’s two New Jersey projects” and wants to stop the projects unless the developer agrees to mitigate the impact. The county also has appealed a ruling by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities granting Ørsted an easement across Cape May property so an underground cable could be installed linking Ocean Wind 1 with the grid. (See County Contests Tx Easement for NJ’s 1st OSW Project.)

The resolution said the “recent, unprecedented deaths and strandings of marine mammals” on the Jersey coast are of “utmost concern” to the county, adding that the State of New Jersey’s claim that there is no connection between the deaths and the OSW projects is “inconsistent with reality.”

The resolution says that in a 2018 lawsuit filed in federal court, the state itself opposed offshore drilling by arguing that “seismic testing activities” would have a “negative impact on marine mammals’ health and abundance” and hurt tourism. The resolution says the county does not find “acceptable” the state’s argument that it does not know what is causing the whale deaths “but that they somehow know for certain that the deaths are not related in any way to the activities” of Ørsted.

Prey Fish Migration

Yet the state’s position is shared by federal officials. A spokeswoman for NOAA, which in a January press conference said it did not believe the survey work on offshore wind projects could be tied to the whale strandings, told NetZero Insider in an email two weeks ago that it has not changed that position.

“At this point, there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys,” said NOAA spokeswoman Andrea Gomez.

The Final Environmental Impact statement for Ocean Wind 1, which the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released in May, concluded that the impact of the project on whales would be “moderate” but that the cumulative impact of the project, along with others, would be moderate to major for the North Atlantic right whales. (See BOEM: Major Visual, Scientific Impacts from NJ’s 1st OSW Project.)

A federal judge on May 17 rejected the argument that an offshore project could harm whales, including the North Atlantic right whales, an endangered species, in a lawsuit against the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project. The judge ruled that the originators of the lawsuit, Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, had not made their case. (See Lawsuit Against Vineyard Wind over Threat to Whales Tossed.)

Shawn M. LaTourette, commissioner for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, told the Assembly committee hearing that one explanation for the increased number of whale strandings is that one of the prey fish that whales eat, menhaden, are moving “landward,” as the habitat of the small fish gets disrupted by climate change.

“And as these prey fish move landward, their predators are following them. Their predators include whales,” he said. “The culprit is a changing climate, and our inability societally to get it under control.”  

But one lawmaker was skeptical of the argument.

“It’s a little hard for us to just assume that that affirmation is real,” said the lawmaker, who was not identified in the audio feed of the meeting, asking for scientists to testify who could “confirm your affirmation.”

LaTourette said the explanation was the product of work by state-employed scientists who compiled the state’s Scientific Report on Climate Change released in June 2020.   

Sound, Vessel Strike, Disease Impact

Douglas Nowacek, a professor of conservation technology and environment and engineering at Duke University, told the committee he didn’t agree with the argument that undersea sonar used to analyze the sea-bed floor could be severely damaging the whales.

Nowacek, who said he has spent 20 years looking at the effects of noise on cetaceans — aquatic mammals such as dolphins and whales — said there could be two types of noise sources at use undersea. But neither would have a major impact on disorienting a whale, he said, adding that he agreed with NOAA Fisheries on this issue.

One type of sound, high-resolution geotechnical, is used to map the ocean bed and also to look at babies in the womb, he said. But the frequency of that source would be too high for a whale to hear, he said.

“Those high frequency sources I would consider de minimis [of little importance] in their potential for impact on basically all marine mammals,” he said. “They are extremely high frequency, which is out of the hearing range of these animals, and they’re also … absorbed extremely quickly.”

The second source, boomer markers or chirpers, which are used for oil and gas exploration, would be too weak to harm a whale when used for OSW projects, he said. These need to analyze only the top 50 meters or so of sea-floor sediment, and so the intensity is perhaps 100,000 times lower than the intensity when they are used to look for fossil fuel sources thousands of meters into the sea bottom, he said.

“Can the sources disorient animals such that they would die instantly? No?” he said. “Do we worry about them getting a little disoriented and deviating around a path? That could certainly happen.”

Robert A. DiGiovanni Jr., chief scientist at the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, said that when he began studying whale strandings in the New York area in the 1990s, he would see one about every 617 days. The frequency began to increase in about 2007, and by 2017 there was one about every 63 days, he said. It has been “hovering” around one every 26 days for a number of years, he said.

“We are currently in the middle of three unusual mortality events for large whales: the North Atlantic right whale, the minke whale and the humpback whale. All of them have started since 2016,” he said.

“Vessel strike and entanglement are the leading causes of mortality for the humpback whales and for the right whales,” he said. The minke whales are felled more by a “biological process, more of a disease process,” he said.