Tag Archives: vessel traffic
Where Have All The Right Whales Gone?
Marine researchers have mapped the density of one of the most endangered large whale species worldwide, the North Atlantic right whale, using newly analyzed data to predict and help avoid whales’ harmful, even fatal, exposure to commercial fishing and vessel strikes. Duke University’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab led a collaboration of 11 institutions in the United States that pooled 17 years of available visual survey data covering 9.7 million square kilometers of the U.S. Atlantic – roughly the same area as the entire contiguous United States. more, >>click to read<< 16:37
Biden’s Offshore Wind Dreams Face Rising Controversy, Opposition
By now, most Americans are likely aware of the increasing number of whales that have been found grounded on Atlantic beaches, some of which lie adjacent to offshore wind projects already under development. In a May, 2022 letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) lead biologist, Brian Hooker, NOAA scientist Brian Hayes warned that “the development of offshore wind poses risks to these species,” and that the “risks occur at varying stages, including construction and development, and include increased noise, vessel traffic, habitat modifications, water withdrawals associated with certain substations and resultant impingement/entrainment of zooplankton, changes in fishing effort and related potential increased entanglement risk, and oceanographic changes that may disrupt the distribution, abundance, and availability of typical right whale food (e.g. Dorrell et al 2022).”But that warning seems to have had little impact. >click to read< 09:53
