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Charismatic Megafauna… “are animal species that are large—in the relevant category that they represent—with symbolic value or widespread popular appeal, and are often used by environmental activists to gain public support for environmentalist goals.” (Wikipedia) Whales are among the quintessential charismatic megafauna groups, having been hunted almost to extinction and only gaining international protection in the mid-twentieth century. Since then many species have flourished though a few are still threatened with extinction. Hence the massive amount of media attention generated by a single individual death, particularly when the dead or dying whale is accessible to tourists.

“Latest figures show that over 13 million people a year are taking a whale watch trip, in an industry spanning 120 countries and overseas territories worldwide, generating $2.1 billion in total revenues.” (Ulla Christina Ludewig and Vanessa Williams-Grey, Responsible Whale Watching, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, 2019 tinyurl.com/328zhcc9

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Humpback Whale Unusual Mortality Event (UME) Along the Atlantic Coast  

Since January 2016, elevated humpback whale mortalities have occurred along the Atlantic coast from Maine through Florida. A portion of the whales have shown evidence of pre-mortem vessel strike; however, this finding is not consistent across all whales examined. More research is needed. (from NJDEP 2016–2023 Humpback Whale Unusual Mortality Event, https://dep.nj.gov/humpback-whale-unusual-mortality-event/federal-resources/)

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“Republicans have claimed that the deaths are linked to offshore wind development. Amendments in the House energy bill would have required the Government Accountability Office to study the potential impacts of offshore wind on tourism, military activities, and marine wildlife. “Like the canary in the coal mine, the recent spate of tragic whale deaths shed new light and increased scrutiny to the fast-tracking of thousands of wind turbines off our coast,” said Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, at a hearing in March.

Instead, the agency states that “the greatest human threats to large whales” are vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. Examinations of about half the humpback whales stranded since 2016 attributed 40 percent of the deaths to either of the two causes. (The other half of the beached whales were too decomposed to analyze.)

A few bigger trends could be behind the increase in whale mortality. One is climate change — warming waters have pulled small fish closer to shore, which also draws in whales hunting food. Fishers looking to catch those same fish tend to follow closely behind, leading to a greater risk of collision between boats and whales.

Another obvious source of whale and vessel strikes is the growing global shipping industry. In 2020, almost 15,000 ships sailed through the Port of New York and New Jersey alone. “Collisions involving ships and whales tend to occur around areas with the greatest commercial shipping traffic,” according to NOAA.

To reduce collision risk, the agency and major environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council advocate for tighter restrictions on vessel speed. But Republicans’ proposed policies have made no mention of this evidence-based solution for protecting whales and other wildlife. In Grist, by Akielly Hu, Apr 20, 2023.” (https://tinyurl.com/2nvh6ncv).

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Beginning in December of last year and extending through most of the first quarter of 2023, New Jersey and New York beaches were inundated with abnormally high numbers of dead or dying whales and smaller marine mammals. These majestic creatures-though not so majestic when being pushed about willy-nilly by tides, wind, waves and various types of earth moving machines-have never expired in such large numbers in such publicly accessible locations in local residents’ memories. Perhaps coincidently, intensive hydroacoustic surveys to determine the suitability of potential sites for the construction of thousands of gigantic windmills and their supporting infrastructure (supposedly to help us all survive what is being sold as an imminent energy/climate crisis) were being committed offshore of the beaches where all of these marine mammal deaths and strandings have been concentrated.

To us inveterate observers of that hunk of Atlantic Ocean real estate known as the New York Bight, and the critters that temporarily or permanently live there, and of the actions of the public agencies charged with-and entitled to tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to do so-administering the Endangered Species and the Marine Mammal Protection Acts, that surely hints at, at best, ineptitude at that’s ineptitude at a fairly advanced level.

What is the “expert” consensus on what seems to us amateurs to be this surprising number of dying/dead marine mammals, species which are all supposedly protected by two rigorously and expensively enforced federal laws (often with corresponding legislation at the state level)? The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA/NMFS) and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM) have emphatically told anyone who will listen three “Facts.” “Fact” #1” is that what is going on among the whales and dolphins in NY/NJ waters has been declared an Unusual Mortality Event (which has been bureaucratized, of course, as a UME (see the “official” definition of this current UME at the beginning of this FishNet piece). “Fact #2” is that none of those government personnel (scientists or bureaucrats) in NOAA/NMFS or BOAM know what caused the majority of the dead dolphins and whales to die (refer to the prior mention of “ineptitude” at the end of the previous paragraph), and (somewhat confusingly, having just written “Fact #2) “Fact #3” is that the dead dolphins and whales were not the victims of anything associated with President Biden’s and (NJ) Governor Murphy’s high profile commitments to filling our inshore and offshore waters with thousands of wind powered generators. And they are going to have this done in a time frame which many experts, experts who are familiar with huge, technically and environmentally complex and bank-breakingly expensive infrastructure projects, believe is impossible.

Note here that all of the involved federal employees, while they are sure that nothing to do with either Governor Murphy’s or President Biden’s dreams and aspirations regarding offshore wind power is involved with the marine mammal deaths, have admitted repeatedly and emphatically that they don’t know what is causing the UME (though they take every possible opportunity to suggest that it is connected to commercial shipping or commercial fishing in the Bight.

According to NOAA/NMFS, the federal agency that conducts marine research, “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.” NOAA’s website says.

So, let’s consider the above three “facts;” that the causes of the almost simultaneous deaths of all these whales and dolphins is not known (real fact), that it is an unusual event (real fact) and that it emphatically has nothing to do with the offshore windmill site work, which has been ongoing for years, or with ongoing offshore windmill siting/sampling or construction, which has barely begun. Those of us who are reasonably familiar with the use-or the misuse-of the English language understand that if you don’t know what the cause of an event is, you can’t from that admitted lack of knowledge determine what the cause of the event isn’t. If all you know is that a car crashed, you can’t say that it definitely didn’t crash because of faulty brakes but it was because of some other yet to be determined factor. Nice try, but….

Then, perhaps coincidently, just when the number of Cetacean deaths/strandings were reaching a crescendo in the media, they stopped dead (yea, pun intended!). Now all the people involved in observing, studying, reporting (and perhaps causing, because we have no proof that they aren’t) these mortalities either work for or contract with New Jersey government, NOAA/NMFS/BOEM, hungry academicians, on the dole ENGOs, or the offshore wind industries (who in more than one instance are the dolees to the ENGOs doling (see Lisa Linowes’ guest column Wind energy or whales? NGO financial conflicts uncovered in The New Lede- 05/12/2022-at https://tinyurl.com/mryvsxk3).

If there are any sceptics among us (God forbid!) they might suspect that word somehow filtered down to the folks on deck, NOAA/NMFS/BOEM employees, wind energy employees, ENGO staff, academicians, etc. that it would be best for their paychecks, their careers, or perhaps their future employment if they ceased or modified those operations that they are still assuring us have no connection to the cetacean deaths/strandings, at least temporarily, at least until the public interest in all of these examples of dead/dying charismatic mega fauna wanes. Just in case, of course.

(I have just seen a post that a bloated, decomposed, smaller whale corpse was photographed just “South of Moriches” in NY waters. And a dying minke whale washed up on a beach in Maine on May 6 – tinyurl.com/4ne5ed4v. It seems more and more like we have an event that started out as a UME has now graduated to a “Just Another Mortality Event-how about JAME for all you acronym fans?)

I have been assured by various folks that the whales/dolphins have not disappeared from the NY Bight. They are still out there. So are the fishermen, and they are still fishing. How about the other vessels that have made NY/NJ the busiest commercial port in the U.S.? Has there been a really significant reduction in shipping into and out of the ports of New York/New Jersey coincident with the surprising cessation of whale/dolphin deaths? When I asked Jeff Bezos, he assured me it wasn’t him (that’s a joke, his line was busy). It seems like the BOEM/NOAA/NMFS list of likely suspects seem to have been eliminated from the list of probable UME (JAME?) causes.

So what probable cause hasn’t been eliminated as a factor in the surprising, and surprisingly coincidental, dearth of recent deaths?

What do President Biden’s and Governor Murphy’s joint (and very public) commitments mean to the state (of New Jersey) and the federal bureaucracies that they control? You don’t have to be an expert in bureaucratic behavior to understand that it’s going to be the extremely rare and/or naïve government bureaucrat (and very possibly soon to be unemployed) in Trenton, NJ or Washington, DC who is going to do or say anything that will slow down their respective bosses’ wishes, dreams, or aspirations to turn our coastal waters into industrial sites, no matter how unrealistic (or in reality how economically or environmentally damaging) they might actually be. That’s definitely not the way to move up the bureaucratic ladder or to secure a civil service pension.

So, as Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) sort of immortalized in the film The Naked Gun, “nothing to see here!” In interview after interview, in article after article, in every instance imaginable, of civil servants, reporters, experts, researchers, environmentalists, grad students, butchers, bakers and candle stick makers (well maybe not the last three!) were-intentionally or not-riffing on Detective Drebin. And just about every one of them said no one knows what’s causing these coincident whale/dolphin deaths/strandings but we’re sure it’s not offshore wind development! And it’s not really abnormal!

(And, considering that rate- and tax-payers will be so terminally invested in windmills, how long will it be before we will be able to dig our way out of what increasingly looks like it’s going to be a mountain of dept?)

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From the NOAA/NMFS Incidental Take Authorizations Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act

The NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources authorizes the incidental take of marine mammals under the MMPA to U.S. citizens and U.S.-based entities, if we find that the taking would:

• Be of small numbers;
• Have no more than a “negligible impact” on those mammal species or stocks; and
• Not have an “unmitigable adverse impact” on the availability of the species or stock for subsistence uses.

Further, we must prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact on the affected species or stocks and their habitat (i.e., mitigation), paying particular attention to rookeries, mating grounds, and areas of similar significance, and on the availability of such species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses; and requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of such takings. (https://tinyurl.com/2yt8k2zt)

On another question definitely not addressed by NOAA/NMFS regarding impacts on marine mammals; what does a cetacean do when it is “only” adversely impacted, not unmitigatedly adversely impacted? Move to another neighborhood? Take an Advil (or a lot of Advil)? Curse at his or her respective mate? Scream at the kids? Pout? Us taxpaying citizens could actually get fined or jailed for harassing marine mammals (see https://tinyurl.com/hbnv9a69 for one of the latest “cases”). What’s the difference between swimming after a dolphin pod in an apparent game of touristy tag and buggering up a bunch of dolphins’ hearing (even if only temporarily, but that’s kind of hard to prove). Just like it’s kind of hard to prove that any “adverse impacts” aren’t eventually directly or indirectly injurious or mortal.

And finally, on the politicalization of this whale/dolphin UME.

Absolutely no proof exists, no evidence, no data, no documentation, not even inside tipoffs or traces, nothing at all to suggest offshore wind turbines and their development in the Atlantic Ocean is the cause of these whale/dolphin deaths. But, the coincidence of the arrival of a fleet of site survey vessels with a reportedly unprecedented increase in the number of observable whale/dolphin deaths-and don’t forget that nowhere near 100% of the dead whales/dolphins are going to end up being observed-is impossible to ignore. A bunch of us want to know why, and if any of us are being encouraged to “lobby” on this issue by the fossil fuel industry, which is a contention of the pro-wind claque-they are keeping a CIA worthy low profile.

Why is the whole issue being turned by the wind power lobbyists, a large chunk of the greenish world and a whole bunch of non-objective individuals and organizations (in “Deep Throat’s” immortal words, “follow the money”) into a us vs. them (or red vs. blue or donkeys vs. mules or progressive vs. conservative or whatever else) political contest. Something is killing whales and dolphins and who knows what else in our oceans. Considering what’s potentially at risk, we can’t afford to not find out what it is. (For some in-your-face shear internet rabble-rousing, read Stop Lying About Whale Deaths by J. Renyolds, Prez of Save Coastal Wildlife-tinyurl.com/2s3v9n3r. Evidently Mr. Renyolds’ solution for saving whales and dolphins-and whatever else out there that is or might be at risk-is to push for dissension rather than for progress. Confoundingly he ends his above linked screed with “If you wish to save whales along the Jersey Shore then we need to work together, not separately.” Words to live by, Mr. Renolds? Seems like in his opinion his are the only words that should count (shades of Frank Drebin!

And finally-at least for now-there is a select group of animals that have been placed in a non-taxonomic group of critters called “charismatic megafauna. This means a really popular (for all of the right reasons) big animal. Whales are among the few ocean-inhabiting critters that are considered to be members of this select group, along with lions and tigers and polar bears and koalas and etc. So an organization with the goal of halting wind industry expansion until we know what its impacts ae going to be on our coastal waters and the animals that live in them has started a petition on Change.org..

 The petition starts “we the signers of this petition hereby call for the immediate halting of all offshore wind activity currently being progressed (undertaken) along the New Jersey shore. We call on both the Federal Government and the State of New Jersey to ensure a thorough independent, transparent investigation of these 7 (as of this writing) whale deaths. We ask these investigations be carried out by federal agencies with independent, third party scientific oversight.”

The petition has garnered over half a million signatures (the URL is https://www.change.org/p/protect-our-coast-nj-save-the-whales-stop-offshore-wind) already. These people, or unquestionably a large majority of them, are most certainly not being either controlled or influenced by the fossil fuel boogeyman in spite of what J. Renolds and his wind energy cheering squad want you to think.

The only thing that’s going to change with a year or two delay to acquire at least an idea of what the possible environmental (and economic) impacts of 3,500 windmills off our coast is going to be, is the economic performance of a number of what I gather are highly subsidized (by guess who?) foreign and domestic mega corporations. Oh well! Perhaps they should have thought of those whales and dolphins just a bit sooner.