Humpback whale deaths cause concern
A YOUNG humpback whale that washed up on an Atlantic City beach in New Jersey, the United States, last Saturday (Jan 7) had evidence of a head injury, a large hematoma located just behind the blow hole, an official from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said on Monday.
“The only thing we suspect may have happened is that it was hit by a large boat,” said Sheila Dean, executive director of the Brigantine-based centre. “There was a big hematoma.”
With environmental and citizens groups calling for a federal investigation into whether sonar mapping related to future wind turbine projects off the coast may have played a role in four recent humpback whale deaths in New Jersey, Dean said it was premature to conclude about a cause of death.
Others noted that the National Marine Fishery Service has designated an unusual mortality event for humpback whales based on an increase in mortality that began in 2016, before any wind energy activity.
Dean said samples from the whale were being tested “to see what else might be going on”. She said the whale was partially decomposed, which might affect how much could be determined.
The whale was the second to wash up in Atlantic City in 15 days. Another washed up in Strathmere on Dec 10 and a fourth in North Wildwood in July.
Last Sunday, following the necropsy, the 30ft (9m) whale was buried in the sand on the beach where it washed ashore, just in front of Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall. Local officials will continue to add sand so that it does not resurface.
A coalition of groups expressing alarm about the impact of coming wind turbines gathered there Monday afternoon at a spot Cindy Zipf, head of Clean Ocean Action, called “a tragic, grim welcome mat”, to the coming offshore wind facilities, the smell from the buried whale still hovering in the air.
“It’s too much, too fast,” she said. “It’s outrageous and our ocean deserves better.”
The groups, including citizen groups Project our Coast and Defend Brigantine Beach, cited six whale deaths, including two in New York, in what they described as an “unprecedented wave of whale deaths”.
They noted that the companies have 11 active “Incidental Take Authorizations”, from the National Marine Fisheries, which amount, said Suzanne Hornick of Protect Our Coast NJ, to a “licence to kill”.
An impact statement on the wind project from the Board of Ocean Energy Management said there are 1,369 humpback whales in the area.
Dean, of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, noted that because of warmer waters, there still is a large population of whales off the coast of New Jersey, which might be a factor in the elevated number of deaths.
“It’s pretty much common sense,” she said. “They’re out there.”
She said it takes time for the samples to yield any information. “There’s still a lot of testing,” she said.
There were no samples taken from the whale that washed up on Dec 23 near the Tropicana, she said, because it was an especially cold and windy day, with a possible tornado, and officials decided to bury the animal quickly.
Danielle Brown, lead researcher for Gotham Whale, a whale advocacy and educational group, said there has been an observed increase in whale deaths for at least six years.
”This is not something that just happened in 2022 or 2023,” said Brown, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources.
Brown said the primary cause of whale deaths has come when they collide with ships or get entangled in fishing gear.
Brown said that the number of whales in the area has increased over the past decade as they follow schools of menhaden fish for food. ”So it does make sense that an increase in whales in the area would lead to an increase in strandings.”
Still, the recent whale deaths have rallied calls to halt the wind farms off the coast of New Jersey.
“We’ve worked all those years to stop ocean pollution, to stop ocean dumping, to stop liquified natural gas facilities, to stop off shore oil drilling,” said Zipf. “And this ocean has come back so beautifully. Marine life is thriving. Now we’re going to be facing a huge industrialisation.”
Whales, most often endangered right whales, have been used as a rallying cry for conservative and fossil fuel industry aligned groups fighting offshore wind projects.
The Heartland Institute, a national libertarian think tank, recently filed comments with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management against an offshore wind project in Virginia, “to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale”.
The Heartland Institute has been closely aligned with fossil fuel and conservative groups in the past, including Exxon Mobil, the Mercer family and Koch Industries, though it no longer discloses its funding sources, according to DeSmog, which tracks climate denial efforts.
The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered whales with fewer than 350 left. The Heartland Institute’s comment said that the 15-megawatt Virginia project “would generate noise levels far in excess of the 120-decibel level which National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has determined is the maximum safe operational level for underwater sound.”