Boston Globe’s whale protection contradiction

from CFACT

By David Wojick

The Boston Globe recently ran a silly story about the CFACT et al. whale protection lawsuit. As this title indicates, it is basically a political hit piece — “Activists are spreading misinformation about whale deaths to obstruct clean energy policies, researchers find”.

What the researchers actually found is that CFACT, Heartland, etc. are conservatives. Ten minutes on their websites would make that clear, but apparently, it is a research result if you put a lot of work into it.

The article talks about, but never addresses, the lawsuit. Its basic (and obvious) point is that the Feds in charge of environmental impact assessment have failed to consider the cumulative impact on the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) from lining the Atlantic coast with huge wind facilities.

Cumulative impact analysis is specifically called for by the Endangered Species Act, and the lawsuit simply asks that this law be enforced by the Court. There is no misinformation.

First, in the Globe article comes a lengthy, nonsensical attack on some of the conservative groups fighting to save the whales from green industrialization on the grounds that conservatives cannot or should not do this. No comment needed.

But then the article wanders into impact science, where they unwittingly present a telling contradiction. First, it says this:

““At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths,” NOAA said on a website dedicated to questions about whales and wind.”

Note no evidence of POTENTIAL. NOAA used to say there was no evidence of actual killing of whales. Now, they have upped their denial to no potential. No potential means no risk, which is sheer nonsense.

But then they make the mistake of talking to an actual whale scientist. The scientist says this, which clearly describes several potentials, thus contradicting NOAA:

“That said, offshore wind development isn’t risk-free for whales, said Jessica Redfern, associate vice president of ocean conservation science at the New England Aquarium. She and other scientists studying the potential impacts of offshore wind are watching to see if the development forces them to change migration paths and whether the noise from construction could hamper a mother’s ability to nurse her calf or cause stress. And they’re watching what wind development might do to the whales’ prey.”

Mind you, Redfern’s description of some of the well-known risks is itself symptomatic of the neglect CFACT et al‘s lawsuit seeks to correct. She refers to “watching to see” what, in fact, cannot be seen because the severely endangered whales live underwater. The whole federally funded strategy at this point is to just wait and see what happens, as though extinction were reversible.

And, as usual, there is no mention of the huge federal harassment prediction numbers for sonar and construction, which create a huge potential for killing endangered critters. NOAA itself estimates that both sonar site surveys and construction pile driving expose a lot of whales and other protected marine mammals to dangerous noise levels.

Getting back to NOAA’s purely political see-no-evil pronouncement of no risk, they officially know better. Over a year ago, they took comments on a draft North American Right Whale (wait and see) protection strategy. A coalition of ten expert whale protection groups warned them in no uncertain terms about the clear threat from site characterization sonar surveys.

Here is the technical heart of their warning: “The Draft EA for the Empire Wind, for example, shows the brand and model of Sparkers and Seismic Air guns (so-called “bubble” guns) that are representative of those expected to be used. This equipment will emit sounds of the same sound frequencies as the calls of the NARW, which anthropogenic sounds are received by the NARW louder (188dB and 192dB respectively) than are the natural calls of the NARW, and thus are reasonably expected to “mask” them, or in common terms, drown them out. Right whales are highly dependent upon sound to maintain contact; they emit contact calls to communicate with conspecifics to keep aware of each other’s locations. Additionally, mothers and young calves must maintain close proximity in order for the calf to nurse and for the mother to be able to protect her calf by placing herself between her calf and predators, and NARW uses contact calls to do this.”

“It is important to understand that the decibel scale is a logarithmic one. So, as is the case here (example above taken from actual developer’s plans), sound emissions with a dB level that is 25 to 35 dB higher than the whale’s call have a loudness level of about six to ten times the whale call’s loudness.”

See my “Ten whale groups slam Atlantic OSW” at https://www.cfact.org/2022/12/21/ten-whale-groups-slam-atlantic-osw/

In short, even the evergreen Boston Globe had to admit that the potential for offshore wind development harming whales is significant. Moreover NOAA has clearly been warned about this threat.

The CFACT et al lawsuit is simply calling for this risk to be properly evaluated by NOAA for North Atlantic Right Whales as required by the Endangered Species Act. This is a risk that NOAA has carefully ignored in the headlong rush to needlessly industrialize the ocean with thousands of enormous wind towers.