Saving Seafood

Are whales endangered by offshore wind turbines? NJ group calls for pause on development.

April 11, 2025 — Two federal agencies are reviewing a petition from an environmental group to create a protected migration corridor in the Atlantic Ocean, including off New Jersey, for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The outcome of the review could have major implications for Gov. Phil Murphy and his administration’s “green energy” efforts. The corridor and its buffer zone would run through areas where New Jersey officials have focused their offshore wind turbine development.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office declined comment on the petition.

Read the full article at the Cherry Hill Courier-Post

‘Great whale conveyor belt’ nourishes the ocean

March 20, 2025 — Whales are the bees of the ocean.

That’s a conclusion of new research showing that whales undertake the longest journeys to transport nutrients of any mammal or large animal on Earth, much like bees collect and distribute pollen.

Researchers from the University of Vermont, who published their findings in Nature Communications, found that humpback, gray and right whales transport more than 3,700 tons of nitrogen each year while migrating along what’s been dubbed the “great whale conveyor belt.”

“Humpback whales and gray whales make the longest-distance migrations of any mammal on the planet, thousands of miles every year,” said study author Joe Roman. “So this study is the first one that I’m aware of that tries to quantify that movement.”

Read the full article at wbur

New technology gives hope to save endangered right whales

January 2, 2024 — Most winter days off Georgia’s coast, scientists crisscross the waves looking for North Atlantic right whales. Those in a boat stay in constant contact with colleagues in a small plane — all scanning the water for whales and, hopefully, newborn calves.

Whale surveys like this are critical to identifying and cataloging every right whale calf that’s born, important work because these are some of the most endangered whales in the world. Just about 370 North Atlantic right whales remain.

But the surveys in the sky and on the water are also imperfect, so scientists are ramping up the effort to track the whales in other ways — especially in the Southeast, where the whales migrate to give birth this time of year.

Read the full article at NPR

Biden admin calls on Supreme Court to reject Vineyard Wind case

December 17, 2024 — The Biden administration is urging the Supreme Court to turn away a petition calling for more analysis of how a major offshore wind project off Massachusetts could affect an endangered whale.

The Bay State group Nantucket Residents Against Turbines has claimed in its appeal to the high court that federal agencies failed to account for the cumulative effects of offshore wind development planned on the East Coast would affect the survival of the North Atlantic right whale when it approved Vineyard Wind 1.

In a brief to the court last week, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the Supreme Court should not consider the case because the group had not raised the issue before two lower courts in its lawsuit over the NOAA Fisheries and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management analysis of the project.

Read the full article at E&E News

Searching for Right Whales During Our Annual Research Survey

December 13, 2024 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

This fall, myself and 10 others set off on our annual North Atlantic Right Whale Shipboard Survey. Our goal was to collect data around groups of endangered North Atlantic right whales, including:

We surveyed a number of areas in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean that included south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, the Gulf of Maine, the northern edge of Georges Bank, Browns Bank, and the Bay of Fundy. Our home during the survey was an offshore supply ship M/V Captain Joseph E. Pearce. This is where we ate, slept, and conducted our research. During the survey, we scanned the horizon from dawn to dusk looking for marine mammals using high-powered binoculars. We looked for any signs of life—blows, bodies, splashes—and recorded the marine mammals we saw.

When we spotted whales, we’d launch our small boat, R/V Coriacea, from the back deck of the Pearce. We use the Coriacea to get closer to the whales and collect data. The back deck was also outfitted with two shipping containers. One was our science lab and the other stored our gear. We are completely set up for research!

This year, high winds kept us at the dock much of the time. We did get some lucky breaks when the weather and whale sightings aligned. Here are some notable highlights from our lucky breaks.

SouthCoast Wind clears federal environmental hurdle

November 13, 2024 — A 147-turbine offshore wind project planned off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard will not harm local species and habitat any more than climate change already is, according to a federal review published on Friday.

One exception: North Atlantic right whales, which could face “moderate adverse” direct and indirect impacts from the SouthCoast Wind project that would not otherwise exist, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s report. The report specifically named vessel noise as potentially disruptive to marine mammals, especially fin and endangered right whales. However, it does not link these disruptions to whale deaths, a contention which has been largely debunked by scientists, including within the federal government. 

“There is no relationship between offshore wind and dead whales,” said Bob Kenney, an emeritus marine research scientist at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

The 2,400-page environmental impact statement on SouthCoast Wind marks a significant step — though not the final sign off — in the multilayered, multi-step regulatory process governing offshore wind. Project developers are still awaiting federal approval on a construction and operations plan — a date for which has not been set — alongside a host of state-level reviews, including several in Rhode Island.

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current

Nantucket Group Takes Challenge Of Vineyard Wind To U.S. Supreme Court

September 26, 2024 — Three years after the Nantucket-based group ACK For Whales first sued to stop the Vineyard Wind project, its legal challenge of the offshore wind project is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

After its arguments were rejected by lower courts, ACK For Whales on Monday formally petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.

The petition asserts that the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals wrongly allowed the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to ignore the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) requirement to use “the best available scientific and commercial data available” when it ruled in April against ACK For Whales’ challenge of Vineyard Wind.

“I have hope,” said Val Oliver, the founding director of the non-profit ACK For Whales, formerly known as Nantucket Residents Against Turbines. “In light of the recent Chevron decision, we think we have a really good chance. That was about government overreach and that is what this (Vineyard Wind) has felt like since the beginning: go, go, go, and we’ll figure it out as we go. That’s just not responsible.”

Read the full article at Nantucket Current

MASSACHUSETTS: NOAA report sends mixed message on wind power and risk to whales

September 26, 2024 — Federal agencies have reauthorized a controversial permit for Vineyard Wind’s final phase of construction, allowing the wind farm developer to continue pile driving with some impact on endangered whale species.

The permit allows Vineyard Wind to finish pile-driving the foundations for its wind turbines in proximity to whales. It does not declare that the industry will not harm whales. It calls it “extremely unlikely” that it will hurt any North Atlantic right whales. But it says a small number of whales of other species may experience temporary to permanent hearing impairment as a result of the noise from pile-driving.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Feds say finishing Vineyard Wind won’t seriously harm whales — but sea turtle deaths expected

August 28, 2024 — The federal government expects no endangered whales, including North Atlantic right whales, to be killed or seriously injured by the installation of Vineyard Wind’s remaining turbines, but the same is not true for sea turtles.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, has issued a new biological opinion on ways the continued turbine installation could affect threatened and endangered species.

The opinion won’t be published for several days, but in a summary provided to CAI, Greater Atlantic regional spokeswoman Andrea Gomez said the agency anticipates that an average of one sea turtle per year will be struck and killed by a boat associated with Vineyard Wind.

Read the full article at CAI

Researchers are on a mission this summer to learn more about right whales in the Gulf of Maine

August 6, 2024 — As the 100-foot long whale watch vessel, “Acadia Explorer,” idles at the dock in Bar Harbor on this day in late July, passenger Sarah Leiter with the Maine Department of Marine Resources opens her laptop.

“This is the game plan for the next two days,” she said, pointing to a map of the Gulf of Maine marked with a series of red dots arranged in a grid-like pattern.

They show the locations of 26 passive acoustic monitors listening for North Atlantic right whales about 30 feet underwater.

On this trip, Leiter’s team will swap out some of the units that need new batteries — and will conduct visual surveillance for whales. They’ll travel at 10 knots along a predetermined path that zigs and zags in and offshore, stopping first at a point just southwest of Swan’s Island.

“Then along the coastline off of MDI, past Mount Desert Rock over to site 6, and then we kind of create the same pattern following a U, until we get to the last visual waypoint, and then we end up back in Bar Harbor,” Leiter said.

Along the way, the crew scans the water almost constantly, looking for signs of marine life.

So far this year they’ve seen humpback, fin and minke whales. But no right whales.

“All data is equally useful data, so those zeros are just as important as finding a pile of right whales,” said Erin Summers, who leads the new marine mammal research division for the Department of Marine Resources.

Read the full article at Maine Public