(ORDO NEWS) — A coalition of anti-wind, environmentalists, and conservatives say the impact of offshore wind turbines on the US Atlantic coast has recently washed up about two dozen large whales.
Government officials and representatives of the wind energy industry insist that these assumptions are unfounded.
In the United States, about 20 large whales have washed up on the shores of New Jersey since December 2022.
The death of sea giants may be related to the operation of offshore wind farms, according to representatives of a coalition that brought together local environmental activists, wind energy critics and conservatives, reports Bloomberg.
It is not clear what exactly caused the deaths of the whales, according to the agency, but campaigners insist that offshore wind projects are harming marine ecosystems.
Officials and companies developing wind energy projects do not agree with these statements. “Groups opposed to clean energy development are spreading misinformation.
They jumped at the opportunity to halt the deployment of clean energy on the East Coast,” JC Sandberg, chief advocacy officer for the Clean Energy Association of America, told reporters.
In January 2022, a group of conservation organizations led by Clean Ocean Action and an alliance of 10 New Jersey mayors sent two letters to the federal government urging the federal government to stop building new wind farms off the coast of the state.
Despite mutual accusations, both sides of the conflict agree that the whales are dying.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that unusual deaths of humpback whales along the country’s Atlantic coast have been recorded since at least 2016 – before any major wind energy projects appeared.
NOAA experts have studied about half of the nearly 180 beached whales. Most often, marine animals died due to collisions with ships or entanglement in fishing nets.
Critics of offshore wind power fear that driving generator poles into the seabed could damage the local ecology.
The head of the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Department of Protected Species warned regulators last year that noise, shipping traffic and habitat change are likely to cause additional stress for the whales and result in consequences for the species’ population.
Environmental groups also emphasize that while the latest deaths are not related to the operation of offshore wind farms, more needs to be done to protect marine life from a variety of threats, including the future construction of wind farms.
According to critics of offshore wind power, the lack of evidence of whale deaths due to wind turbines does not prove that installations do not harm the ocean and its inhabitants.
The well-being of whales is also threatened by underwater mining.
According to a study by the environmental foundation Greenpeace in Germany, the noise generated by the extraction of nickel, cobalt and other precious metals for the production of batteries on the seabed drowns out the signals of whales, preventing their communication.
This poses a potential threat to deep waters in the North Pacific Ocean, home to 22 to 30 species of cetaceans, including endangered blue whales.
In this region, the Canadian company Metals Company plans to develop several subsea mining projects in the Clarion Clipperton zone.
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