Another dead whale

[Broad Bill]

Originally Posted by Exit135

It's a simple analysis, cost vs. benefit, as it has always been and always will be.

Exit,

While I agree with your comment that's the way it should be, there are any number of instances where decisions being made by the federal government don't follow that formula. Meaning cost outweighs the benefit but when you get politics involved decisions are made for reasons other than cost benefit analysis. Do you think every project involved in the recently passed $1.7 trillion Omnibus bill passed by the outgoing Congress was cost justified. Not a chance.

In addition, there's two major problems I personally have with how these wind farms are being managed. First this is all backed by foreign investment, in particular a Denmark company. Current administration can propose a $6.8 trillion budget, approve a $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill before the new house took effect but as a country we can't invest $100 billion in our own green energy infrastructure. Makes absolutely no sense.

Second, and based on NOAA's own admission, the true cost and consequential costs and the true benefits of this project are indeterminable at this stage because this is new technology and we have insufficient data to understand what economic consequences or benefits wind farm development could potentially cause. Just remember, if these wind farms have an impact on any part of the marine food chain, it's going to have an impact on the entire food chain. And what impact will all this have on the larval stage and early stage development of all species including mammals, fish and crustaceans. No one can say for sure because no studies have been done to determine the impacts. This issue should have been addressed 20 years ago by our government while we had time. Instead the federal government sat on their hands and now we're moving at light speed without regard for unforeseen and potentially severe economic and environmental consequences which I believe we're already beginning to see.

[Gerry Zagorski]

So if all of a sudden there was Chocolate flooding the streets of small towns in Central PA, wouldn't Hershey be the first place you'd look?

[Broad Bill]

Originally Posted by Gerry Zagorski

So if all of a sudden there was Chocolate flooding the streets of small towns in Central PA, wouldn't Hershey be the first place you'd look?

As the saying goes, "Where there's smoke there's fire". The last two months there's been a whole lot of smoke and it's just a matter of time before the fire reveals itself.

[shresearchdude]

Just some more info to consider.

About E360
Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues. We feature original articles by scientists, journalists, environmentalists, academics, policy makers, and business people, as well as multimedia content and a daily digest of major environmental news.

Yale Environment 360 is published at the Yale School of the Environment. We receive funding from the Ford Foundation, the BAND Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, and the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA). All of Yale Environment 360’s editorial decisions and judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

The opinions and views expressed in Yale Environment 360 are those of the authors and not of the Yale School of the Environment or of Yale University.



https://e360.yale.edu/features/humpb....s.-east-coast

[Gumada]

A senior Biden administration scientist authored an internal memo in May 2022 warning of the impacts offshore wind development may have on marine life months before the recent spate of whale deaths along the East Coast.

Sean Hayes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) chief of protected species, penned the memo in May 2022 and sent it to Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) lead biologist Brian Hooker, also copying more than a dozen other scientists from the two agencies. The memo highlighted Hayes' concerns about how offshore wind construction and surveying could disrupt the endangered Atlantic right whale.
"The development of offshore wind poses risks to these species, which is magnified in southern New England waters due to species abundance and distribution," Hayes wrote in the letter dated May 13. "These risks occur at varying stages, including construction and development, and include increased noise, vessel traffic, habitat modifications, water withdrawals associated with certain substations."
"The focus of this memo is on operational effects, and as such, focuses on potential oceanographic impacts driving right whale prey distribution, but also acknowledges increased risks due to increased vessel traffic and noise," he continued. "However, unlike vessel traffic and noise, which can be mitigated to some extent, oceanographic impacts from installed and operating turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year lifespan of the project, unless they are decommissioned."

Hayes added that offshore wind development may also impact the distribution, abundance and availability of typical right whale food by causing oceanographic changes. Such infrastructure may also increase entanglement risks posed to whales since fishing techniques and efforts would be impact by wind farms.
The revelation that administration officials were concerned about how offshore wind impacts whales comes amid an uptick in whale deaths along the Atlantic coast. At least 12 dead whales have beached in New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia since December 2022.

[Broad Bill]

Originally Posted by shresearchdude

Just some more info to consider.

About E360
Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues. We feature original articles by scientists, journalists, environmentalists, academics, policy makers, and business people, as well as multimedia content and a daily digest of major environmental news.

Yale Environment 360 is published at the Yale School of the Environment. We receive funding from the Ford Foundation, the BAND Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, and the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA). All of Yale Environment 360’s editorial decisions and judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

The opinions and views expressed in Yale Environment 360 are those of the authors and not of the Yale School of the Environment or of Yale University.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/humpb....s.-east-coast

Shresearchdude,

Personally I appreciate the work researchers and science do, without it we'd be living in the dark ages and making decisions blindly. So my perspective is by no means about not needing science in this world. Anyone thinking otherwise, in my opinion, wouldn't be thinking clearly.

I read the article you posted in the link before you actually posted it. What it says to me when I read it is there's a lot we don't know and need to learn about consequences and benefits associated with ocean based wind farms yet we're moving ahead with massive investments and installations without understanding the short term or long term consequences of those decision on fish, mammals, crustaceans, the economy and the environment. The consequences of that decision could range from benign to catastrophic and everything in between. Keep in mind this is on the heels of Covid and the politically charged narrative provided the public that resulted in 700 million people world wide contracting the virus and almost 7 million deaths.

I love how in the article in upper case red letters it says :

Almost all the humpback strandings that occurred in New York and New Jersey this winter had clear signs of a vessel strike.

Yet in the body of the article it says :

Indeed, almost all of the humpback strandings that have occurred in New York and New Jersey this winter had clear signs of vessel strike, though it is unknown if the collisions occurred before or after the whales died. (Most of the full necropsy results are still pending.)

I guess they just failed to leave out that most important point when editing the piece and highlighting the narrative they want us to believe.

Gulf of Maine is heating up and bunker and krill are heading south as are whales. Haven't seen much krill in our local waters and the resurgence of bunker in our area isn't due to climate change. It's due to restriction imposed on Cooke Inc. and Omega Protein who were destroying the menhaden population in Delaware Bay and up and down the Eastern Seaboard. If most of the Humpback Whale population migrates to the Caribbean in the winter, how are Gulf of Maine waters too warm for their liking. I'm sure those waters are still teeming with krill, menhaden, mackerel, silverbacks, pollack, smelts, sand eels, cod, herring and haddock. All part of the whale food chain. But the article would want us to believe global warming, which seems to be the go to smoking gun these days for everything unknown, is pushing all other stocks further north and east but in this case and for unexplained reason is pushing the whale population south. Why, because in my opinion it fits the narrative the federal government is selling to protect wind farm development.

As I asked in my earlier post, if any part of this article is true, why didn't we witness a significant amount of marine mammals washing ashore in the summer months when more whales took up residence inshore (unprecedented numbers) in proximity to the second largest port in the country operating at significantly higher levels of commercial vessels, commercial trawlers and recreational boats than these past two months. Common sense would suggest we'd have seen greater vessel strikes and even more whales washing ashore yet to my knowledge there were none.

What's at stake here is making this country more dependent on green energy from foreign owned wind farm syndications, causing potentially indeterminable and potentially irreversible environmental and economic damage to mammals, fish and crustaceans to states whose legacy and economies are founded on harvesting the oceans resources with truthfully no idea of the consequences, good or bad, of those decisions. What this country doesn't need right now on the heels of Covid is a politically motivated project which could cause unforeseen chaos to people already suffering from the past three years.

NASA doesn't launch missiles and hope they don't explode. They simulate everything to the last and most minute detail and then launch. Department of Energy and certain local politicians might be well served taking a page out of their playbook.

They should place a moratorium on testing, whatever timeframe is necessary, to better understand the causes of UME "unusual mortality event" and reassess the risks associated with ocean based development. As others have mentioned, if during the moratorium we see a decline in whale mortality, that alone would give a good indication of what's caused these deaths over the last two months. Or maybe they don't want that information being published. Anything else is gambling with as opposed to investing in this planet's health for future generations.

[Broad Bill]

Another attempt to twist the facts to justify the narrative the federal governments wants to redirect attention away from wind farm development and potential side effects of site exploration and seismic testing. And conveniently once again, it appears if there's any issue at hand regarding fisheries management, it's been agreed the smoking gun will always be climate change, even if as the other article I posted stated whales from the Gulf of Maine are actually moving south and winter in much warmer waters in the Caribbean.

Read the attached article for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

https://abc7ny.com/climate-change-de...area/12901186/

As of March 2023, no offshore wind-related construction activities have taken place in waters off the New Jersey coast, and DEP is aware of no credible evidence that offshore wind-related survey activities could cause whale mortality. While DEP has no reason to conclude that whale mortality is attributable to offshore wind-related activities, DEP will continue to monitor.

Instead, the DEP called attention to the increase in ocean temperatures due to "human-caused climate change caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels," and the danger it poses for marine mammals.

So warmer temperatures in the summer doesn't pose a threat as no whale deaths were reported but much colder temperatures and significantly less boat traffic in the winter does. Isn't that the exact opposite of the theory climate change theorists are trying to argue?

Specifically, food sources for whales like menhaden, are forced to adapt to the rising temperatures by moving landward to a more favorable location. Whales follow their food source, and the closer to land they get, the more likely they are to come into conflict with human activities (ie. be hit by a vessel.)

I guess we're supposed to believe in the last few months there's been more bunker inshore than during the summer / fall months due to climate change. Bunker have a north / south migration pattern as opposed to an east / west and are rarely found inshore in our local waters this time of year when the whale deaths occurred. They're off North Carolina spawning this time of year, but that's conveniently left out of the article

No wind related construction took place but ocean mapping using seismic testing by the survey vessel Fugro Enterprise started on 12/5/22, commensurate with the general time frame whales started washing ashore.

We should all sleep well at night knowing the DEP will continue to monitor the situation in spite of Sean Hayes, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) chief of protected species warning about how wind farm construction, development and operations could be directly detrimental to whales and cause inherent risk with habitat changes and the displacement of their food supply.

[Exit135]

It's very telling that the other sides of this argument (corporate wind farms) have remained silent regarding these tragic marine mammal deaths. The reason is they have been through the federal N.E.P.A. process, public hearings have been held, written comments have been submitted and reviewed and they have received the N.E.P.A. Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI). The only remedy would be to bring a lawsuit against the responsible Federal agency for violation of the NEPA process. I haven't heard of any such lawsuit even being contemplated. Everything else is just static and rhetoric. Sad but true.

[hartattack]

The stranded dolphin found in Leonardo this week had me wondering if survey sounding boats were nearby,,, sure enough they were! ..... see attached.... Go Pursuit and Go Discovery were both in Raritan Bay this week, although Go Discovery turned off their AIS.

[Broad Bill]

For those who didn't see this article, interesting read. A glimpse of what the landscape of NJ, NY, Rhode Island and Massachusetts will look like in the not too distant future.

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news...ealed/3274895/

Massachusetts currently has 2,192 Megawatts of capacity with a goal of increasing that to 5,600 MW's by 6/30/27. RI has 49.4 MW's with a goal of 100% renewable energy by 2033. NY has 2,192 MW's currently, all on shore, with a goal to add 9,000 in shore by 2035 and NJ, which has only 9 MW's currently, has a goal set by our Governor of 11,000 in shore by 2040.

Without the benefit of historical facts about the impacts to marine life seismic testing, development and operations will have on marine life along with in my opinion a very high risk these areas for national security will ultimately be restricted to fishing when we become dependent on renewable energy generation, the rules are going to change. No different than the restrictions put in place at Earle post 911. This is a bet the ranch proposition with potentially catastrophic and unquantifiable impacts to residents and businesses of coastal states not to mention the projected increase by 400% for the cost of energy passed on to the average American who today is barely able to keep up with current living costs.