Offshore wind opponents say federal agency reports acknowledge offshore wind harm to whales

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took aim at offshore wind energy during a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan last week. The former president said “windmills” were harming whales and said he would abolish offshore wind power on the first day of his second term.

“I want to be a whale psychiatrist. This drives the whales crazy. And something happens to them, but for some reason they wash up on the shore, and you know, these environmentalists ignore them. But they don’t talk about it.” Trump said.

Trump has said whales are “going crazy” from the vibrations of massive structures, but experts say construction and ship operations are more likely to harm the animals.

Inevitable Consequences

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) came to this conclusion in a new report on the environmental impacts of six wind farms off the coast of New York and New Jersey. The report said the noise could harm fish, marine mammals, sea turtles and birds, causing habitat displacement and disrupting migration patterns.

The report provides details of mitigation measures that could be taken, but concludes that offshore wind development “would lead to unavoidable adverse consequences.”

Robert Rand, founder of acoustics consulting company Rand Acoustics, has studied noise levels from piling vessels and sonars. Both of its independent studies found that incidental harassment permits, which are permits that offshore wind developers must obtain to conduct activities that could threaten marine animals, do not impose sufficient mitigation requirements to protect marine animals.

Rand told Just news that the report shows federal agencies may be backtracking on their assertions that offshore winds do not harm marine wildlife. “Any concession from federal agencies that they are harming marine species is both a step in the right direction and a condemnation of the agencies responsible for implementing the MMPA (Marine Mammal Protection Act) and ESA (Endangered Species Act),” Rand said. .

To install offshore wind towers, 30-foot-wide monopiles must be driven into the seabed by special vessels. Rand said his research has shown that even with the full complement of noise controls required by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), pile driving is as loud as a 2,000-psi seismic air gun. According to him, the equivalent level of noise in the air is the shots of a 155-mm howitzer every two seconds.

Rand said developers have no real means of controlling noise other than maintaining adequate distance from marine animals. However, NOAA permits the use of equipment in habitats of whales and endangered marine species, so maintaining a safe distance is not possible.

Nothing new

Dr David Wojick, senior policy advisor at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, said Just news that BOEM’s report on wind farm lease areas does not contain any new findings. He said every wind energy project is preceded by a draft environmental impact statement. These are prepared jointly by BOEM and NOAA, such as the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. These include environmental impact assessments of NOAA pursuit permits.

The EIS report for Empire Wind states: “It is possible that piling could result in the movement of animals into areas with lower quality habitat or a higher risk of vessel collision or fishery interaction.”

“Note that this does not say that any whale was actually killed, and that is important. They still say there is no evidence that whales are being killed,” Wojick said. He said offshore wind developers receive permits for Level A and B harassment. Level A harassment involves activities that could result in permanent deafness for marine animals, Wojick explained, and the permits specify the number of animals that would be harmed in this way. Developers are required to implement various mitigation measures to prevent this amount from being exceeded.

He said denials by environmental groups, federal agencies and offshore wind developers are based on a lack of direct cause-and-effect to deny any harm to the whales. It’s difficult for whale advocates to prove that a particular whale died as a result of injuries caused by offshore wind noise because those deaths are secondary to the reactions and injuries caused by the noise levels, they say.

“Of course, no one is claiming that pile driving or sonar surveys directly kill whales. They use this trick,” Wojic said. He compared it to a child throwing fireworks on the sidewalk and dogs found dead in the street. Although the dog’s autopsy shows that it was hit by a car, it was the fireworks that caused the dog to run into the road.

“Instead of fulfilling its authority under the law, NOAA has issued hundreds of thousands of noise hazard ‘decisions’, including for endangered North Atlantic right whales, an already noise-prone species with a Major risk classification.” the most serious classification,” Rand said. “This is shameful and unconscionable.”

Other impacts

Rand said there are other issues that the report and federal agencies still haven’t addressed. A 2017 study found that seismic airguns, with noise levels comparable to pile driving, kill krill and zooplankton, which whales eat. A complex food chain of zooplankton exists throughout the ocean, and their destruction would directly impact the marine food web, he said.

“What worries me is that so-called environmental groups have been campaigning against seismic airguns for decades because of the noise harm to whales, but the equally shockingly loud noise levels from offshore wind pile driving are causing no reaction at all. Noise hazards are noise hazards,” Rand said.

As many offshore wind opponents noted after the broken blade incident off Nantucket, Rand said the impacts of blade incidents were not considered in any environmental impact assessments.

While there is indeed no direct causal evidence that offshore wind harms whales, there is evidence that these projects are harming whales. Industry critics say more attention should be paid to how these impacts are driving the increase in whale mortality in the Atlantic Ocean.