On December 21, the News & Observer reported that a North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing gear was spotted off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries division (NOAA Fisheries) reportedly expected the whale to die from the injuries. It was the third time that week that a right whale was seen entangled in fishing gear, with the other two being in Massachusetts (and NOAA Fisheries expected at least one of those also to die). The N&O wrote that, “In 2017, NOAA declared an unusual mortality event for the species based on the impact human activities were having on it.”
North Atlantic Right Whales are critically endangered and nearing extinction. The rapidly declining population is down to an estimated 360 whales, of which only 70 are capable of bearing calves.
On December 27, WRAL reported that a dead humpback whale had washed ashore Kitty Hawk beach. At the time, WRAL reported that the cause of the whale’s death was “unclear.” The article subhead noted (weirdly, I thought) that the dead whale was “making for a rare sight for some beachgoers on Friday morning.”
Humpback whales are an endangered species and have also been suffering an unusual mortality event since 2016, according to NOAA Fisheries.
It was also the 11th whale death off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia in 2024, according to WTKR. The news service reported that, “NOAA researchers say they’re seeing a spike in deaths from humpback whales, minke whales, and North Atlantic right whales.” Three of those deaths occurred in one week in March.
Minke whales are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and have also been suffering an unusual mortality event since 2017, according to NOAA Fisheries.
Biden Administration: “Human Activities” Are Killing the Whales, but Constructing Dozens of Offshore Wind Facilities Don’t Count as “Human Activities”
Unfortunately for the whales, media, the federal government, state government, and environmentalists who had once been “Save the Whales” activists now push rapid and reckless construction of massive, sprawling offshore wind facilities up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Pres. Joe Biden made it a day-one action item of his administration. These facilities are being placed in whales’ migratory paths and feeding and calving areas, and their construction and operations are excessively noisy, which is especially dangerous to whales who rely on sonar, pushing them into shipping and fishing lanes where they suffer deadly boat strikes and fishing entanglements.
Map of Offshore Wind Projects (Planned or Leasing) in the Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales’ Migration, Feeding, and Calving Areas
Two of those facilities under construction are the 176-turbine Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project and the 190-turbine Kitty Hawk Wind project. Officially, their proximity to where the dead whales are being found is coincidental.
Map Showing the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project and the Kitty Hawk Wind Energy Area
If they need to answer the question of why the whales are straying into shipping and fishing lanes, the Biden administration and media have a pat answer: climate change.
In this tidy blameshifting, a catalyst for exacerbating whale mortality events gets recast as the “solution.” Of course, it relies on people buying into the notion that 32 offshore wind facilities would actually mitigate carbon dioxide emissions enough to mitigate climate change, which, among many other things, would require ignoring that the U.S. has been leading the world in reduced CO2 emissions from energy while China has been belching out increased emissions many times over the amount the U.S. has cut.
Changes in CO2 Emissions from Energy Around the World, 2005–2023 (in Million Metric Tons)
Nevertheless, a federal lawsuit against CVOW argues, among many other things, that the federal government illegally failed to consider the cumulative effects on whales and other marine wildlife of constructing 32 offshore wind facilities in approving CVOW. Courts have previously prevented the federal government from approving piecemeal projects that would have a combined effect on endangered species. Constructing nearly three dozen massive projects in migratory paths and calving areas would seem rather obviously to threaten grievous cumulative effects on the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.
Is It Worth It?
As a source of electricity, offshore wind facilities are extremely expensive, and worse, they’re completely unreliable. Wind is notoriously intermittent. Sometimes the facilities are producing power, but many times their power production is gone with the wind, causing utilities that rely on wind power to need reliable sources on hand to ramp up their power production to make up for wind’s sudden absence. Those reliable sources are thermal fuels, coal, oil, and gas, as well as nuclear, the most efficient source of electricity, and one that is zero-emissions like wind and solar and that — for some bizarre reason — they oppose.
Click the link for more discussion of the many other costs and impacts of offshore wind.
