Thrown To the Wind

Environmental Progress

The wind industry says it isn’t killing whales, but it is. New boat traffic is colliding with whales. And high-decibel sonar is separating whale mothers from their calves, sending them into harm’s way. Our new documentary, which lays out the evidence, is now free to watch.

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Transcript:

Endangered whales washed up on New York and New Jersey beaches. Was this activity related to Offshore wind energy Farms such as surveying? Could dirt from 23 dead whales have washed up on the East Coast Shore since December?

[Music]

“I did stop and I mean that’s the ship you wanted to see too.”

“Yeah it is. That ship has been noticed in roughly the same time period that there have been beachings.”

“I saw this Captain post something. He said his 20 to 25 years on the ocean, he’s only seen one dead whale. I think it was like two months ago you saw three in the same day.”

“Three in the same day.”

[Music]

“Come on bud.”

[Music]

“So living in Southern New Hampshire, or the Forest Area directly in back of my home was raised to make Rave for homes and I wanted to be closer to Nature so now we’re living in Northern New Hampshire, much smaller population, less development and when I walk outside my door I’m in the middle of nature with all of the beauty and all of the quiet and it’s not reproducible in many places. This is unique and this is what I love.”

[Music]

“So 20 years ago when I became involved with wind energy debate I was not in the minority. I, along with all the environmentalists that I was aware of and conservationists, were very concerned that the precautionary principle was the priority when it came to building any kind of development whether it was a subdivision or a power plant or anything. It was the burden of the developer to make sure that whatever work was being done, the environment was considered and the harms associated with that development were avoided or minimized.”

“Hey guys, good to see you. Thank you for joining the call. Rob, nice to meet you. Eric, Lisa. Lisa, do you want to just kick us off?”

“Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Michael. Thank you everyone for being here. What I want to do is introduce the team that’s been working on investigating whale deaths and activity related to Offshore winds and Rob and you and I have worked together for a long time. You, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself.”

“My name is Robert Rand. I’m an environmental scientist specializing in Acoustics. I’ve been working in that field since 1980 and have provided input to an RDC on Naval low frequency sonar and also worked with the ocean mammal Institute.”

“Rob Iran is going to be conducting noise studies out there actually collecting the sonar coming off these boats. Thanks Rob. So you guys finished the research, is done?”

“The research is done and just to give everyone an understanding of where we’re coming from, the Genesis of this whole study dates back to several months ago in December and January. There was a significant and uptick in whale deaths occurring in New Jersey and New York and the public started to become very concerned that there was a relationship between those deaths and offshore wind activity that was happening in that same ocean area. Roughly 350 whales have died along the east coast since 2016, including humpbacks, Mickey and North Atlantic white whales and what’s happening with the wind industry is they are conducting high resolution geophysical studies to map the land under the water in preparation for projects. The uptick truly happened beginning in 2016. It was a slight dip in deaths in 2022 and in the first six months of 2023, so just half the year, we’ve had roughly 40 plus whales have died.”

“It’s amazing and and depressing. Here we are 20 years later, a massive shift in thinking. The precautionary principle is no longer the priority especially when it comes to wind energy and renewable energy. The priority has been overwhelmed by the urgency to resolve the climate change issue. We want to get to the point where get this Steel in the ground, get the turbines up and running, get the power plant built and off of fossil fuel so that we can save the planet but in the process the natural environment is being sacrificed. We’re never going to get those areas back if we’re allowed to proceed and that’s just untenable to me. I don’t know what it will take to change but that’s where we are and I don’t know if the public generally knows that but that is what’s happening right now.”

[Music]

“So if we look at early part December 2016 through six months later into May of 2017, as you can see there’s like traffic a few whales here and there but as you can see in this lease area south of Martha’s Vineyard there’s really no traffic at all. If we go now this is January instead of May 2019 and boom this is the whole New York bite all the way out as you can see lots of traffic lots of whale strandings and death or whale deaths. It’s only when they started going into the windlease areas that we believe that the whales are dying.”

“So those red dots aren’t whale deaths right?”

“Precisely. So finally this is the one that is from the the most recent so we just compared same times year over year so this is October 21 to February of 2022 and then when we switch we see all this lease area traffic and we’ve got all of these wild deaths. These are the ones that just happen and like Lisa said precipitated this study.”

“What a scandal. I mean just appalling Behavior by many many people that knew better or should have known better. I just I appreciate your caveat that we’re gonna have you know they’re not suggesting causality but it’s impossible to look at these correlations and not imagine there’s some connection. Fantastic work guys that your your labor is really evident and it’s really paid off. I’m so happy and grateful that you guys did this.”

“Awesome this is exciting.”

“Yeah, very good work.”

“I love you guys, appreciate this.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you, very appreciate it.”

“Good to meet you all.”

“Thank you.”

“You play always.”

“Yes, yeah but one of the things working on noise especially with wind turbines is it’s driven me into a spiritual practice. This is a CD. It’s a deep relaxation CD and I made it after a meditation Vision in my studio back in early 2008. I was wondering what would the sound be like that would help people get more relaxed and then I had a meditation vision and when the vision was done I grabbed my gear and I went out to record sound, the sound of surf because I heard a very slow sound of surf would sound like breathing and recorded that and then I made the other sounds that I’d heard during the vision and combine them.”

“And do you remember the sounds?”

“Oh I’m very distinctly. I still remember them. I still remember the vision. I I got imprinted it was wild. These are things that are they’re not explainable.”

“Wow. So have you done anything else since this?”

“Oh I’ve done a whole all kinds of things but I’ve got a whole I’ve got a new CD that I’m just about ready I have to master it.”

“So this is a reed State Park yeah.”

[Applause]

[Music]

“Okay yeah I mean they’re all out there too I mean yeah they’re all out there’s a number yeah they’re just we’re looking for a unicorn yeah as soon as there’s a few.”

[Music]

It’s amazing this is exactly where we catch tuna fish in the summer. Yeah, there’s a lump here the whales, the birds, the sand eels stack in here. It’s all, I mean, it’s like Sea World. Yeah, we’re about 28 nautical miles east of Barnegat Light. We saw a couple whales breach, just a handful of them here in different sizes. We noticed them right now we’re about five miles, six miles from two different survey ships that are right in this direction here and there. And as a whale just breaches in there, another whale right there, two just preached just a few degrees this way is one survey ship and whatever maybe 40 some degrees get another service ship there, uh both five six miles away.

You’re gonna put these wind turbines in, it’s going to disrupt the bottom. No matter what kind of marine life you affect, it’s going to all affect it all together because they’re all intertwined. Marine biologists that I’ve talked with over the years talk about avoidance and aversion and that doesn’t seem to be accounted for in the NOAA and Bone paperwork that I’ve seen so far. They don’t make the connection between a loud noise in the water and the species moving away from that noise and that’s a problem because they don’t have the fat stores to run around forever trying to get away from the noise.

If the calf gets separated from the mother, what I understand is both of them start stressing a lot and it doesn’t take long for them to die. It’s a very deadly situation. The calf needs the mother for food, the mother’s trying to raise the calf so the mother will expand energy, try to find the calf or raise the vocalization level. We’ll look around for the calf, it’ll swim to its last position. All of these things have been documented but at some point both the mother and the calf run out of energy. At that point if they’re close enough to shore maybe they beach and you find them. If they’re out here they die and they sink.

There’s certain personalities, they’re like all in or all out. I tend to be that kind of person where it’s like keep doing it until you’re done, don’t stop. That gets a little bit obsessive. Believe I was, I was leave that the environmental movement was always there, their first priority was protecting wildlife and what we see is they’re right there ready to protect the wildlife and have successfully stopped gas pipelines from being built. They’ve successfully stopped power plants from being built but when it comes to Offshore wind renewable energy in general they’re not stepping up for the Wildlife.

Officials at Robert Moses Beach are trying to handle a situation when they beached a whale this morning. This is an area just off of field number five and see the whale on the beach, official officials on the scene. So NOAA has a network of organizations that have responsibility for going on investigating any kind of marine mammal stranding or death and when we were investigating and looking into the money trail, we found that members of that Network are actually taking money directly from the wind industry.

The Atlantic marine conservation Society caught our attention. So Atlantic marine conservation Society is working with New York state parks, the New York State DEC and NOAA Fisheries to examine a humpback whale that washed ashore. Humpback whale is approximately 28 feet long and it is a juvenile male and our team is doing an exam so we record any evidence of human interaction, any evidence of infectious disease to determine why it might have died.

That organization sometime around 2020, 2021 they had a change in their board of directors and it went from a few people that seemed dedicated to the effort to the president of the board Paul Tana is the lead lobbyist for Ecuador, a wind developer. You go down the list further you come to Sammy Chu, he is a distributed energy developer. Jennifer Dupont, strategic environmental Affairs manager Ecuador, she is the government Affairs person for advocating for Ecuador in front of federal and state governments. It goes on and on, about half of the board of the Atlantic marine conservation Society appears to benefit from the development of offshore wind and this is the organization that is responsible for investigating whale deaths that have been happening off the coast of New York.

Atlantic marine conservation Society has responded to 85 whales since we started in 2017. Energy surveys and projects being sure of New York and some are in development right now. All I can really say is that right now the examinations that we’ve done haven’t brought any evidence forward that there’s no connection between the two. Climate change is going to be one of the biggest issues these animals are facing as the oceans warm and you know things change. We need to make sure that we’re continuing to document what happens to these animals when they Strand and make sure that the renewable energy in any form is at a Forefront because that will help climate change.

Thank you thousand percent that is the boat you’re gonna put the drift sock in try here you want to go a little closer let’s bring it to a dead stop well they’ll come right in front so we’ll just sit right here holy [ __ ] man are you kidding me it sounds like they’re like oh it’s on my pile driving and he’s not proud of him boom boom boom boom boom it’s like a drum beat huh yeah so they can just like measure the bottom right yeah so they sent out a pulse and they get a reflection back I think is now much like rock dust and stuff like that and setting it in the bottle for them yeah I think the three layers you can see the top top of the mud or whatever’s down there and then they can see down through it they’re getting uh Peak greetings of about 150 decibels or so it’s it’s very loud is very very loud once 160 is roughly a hundred give or take on on land so if you had 100 DB coming onto your property at your house you’d be a there’d be a lawsuit so fast it would make their heads I mean that’s that’s loud and it’s 24 hours a day so it’s day and night if I can just start playing this so this is off of Maui about uh two-thirds of a mile I think we were out that far and hundreds of whales hundreds hundreds of whales so that’s a whole civilization of Wales versus the skew North Atlantic right whales yeah. [Music]

“So this is a healthy population they’re all communicating lots of communication going on these are these are right whale calls let’s see if I can get into this this area here you could play it please yeah I think we can and now we’ll we’ll hear a whale in a second this is going to make a call that’s the fundamental and those are the harmonics of the call the whale’s about a mile away.”

[Music]

“Yeah but they’re very sparse compared to adult humpbacks in Hawaii this is a critically endangered species very few of them we were very fortunate we get out there there were 12 whales in in the vicinity where we went and we were able to make some recordings I don’t see where the North Atlantic right whale Will Survive offshore wind with 300 less than 350 on the planet today and this tremendous industrialization of their area what I’ve got in my report is a description of the survey it’s just the general interest in going out to see if we can measure exploratory sonar vessel and so there’s a picture of the vessel there we had a calibrated hydrophone that we would drop into the water first we went to two nautical miles and then to one out of command then to a half nautical can you imagine in each one of those occasions in each one as soon as I get the hydrophone in the water at two nautical miles I could hear the ship I could hear banging I could hear the ship noise I think I can play that.”

[Music]

Wow that is louder than I thought it would be. That’s amazing. Yeah, that is no, no one can survive in that. You’re not, you’re gonna run away from that half a nautical mile away from a sound source and if this were in air it would be equivalent to roughly 90. 90 decibels it’d be like a loud weapon, uh, to hear it at 90 DB at a kilometer that’s a loud weapon.

And what I’m seeing is troubling. What I’m seeing are levels that are above the limit which NOAA itself set to be protective at distances which are much higher than were granted in the incidental harassment authorization. So to me it looks like an absolute breakdown of regulatory protection for the right whale and we only looked at one vessel. There are many vessels out there.

Foreign chief of protected species, gentleman by the name of Sean Hayes, had sent a letter to BOEM. He expresses significant concern over the development of offshore wind in the southern New England Waters. In his letter in particular pertains to the North Atlantic right whale and the risk there. So this is May 13, 2022. He expresses a number of reasons but one that he really focuses on is the wave effect of the turbine. So when the turbines are spinning it creates a turbulence on the back end of it. The concern is that it’s going to destroy the plankton which is what the whales feed on. If that dies off that area is not a feeding ground anymore for the North Atlantic right whale, which right now it’s estimated at less than 340 individuals remaining on the planet. There aren’t many places where the North Atlantic right whale can go and when there’s so few left on the planet it’s, it’s dust into extinction.

But then he makes a statement that is so extraordinary. Unlike vessel traffic and noise which would be related to the construction work which can be mitigated to some extent, I think impacts from installed and operating turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year lifespan of the project unless they are decommissioned. And yet here we are moving forward with building the projects.

So according to Sean Hayes, he makes a very clear statement that we need to impose a buffer area, no turbine zone around the Nantucket Shoals in order to protect the North Atlantic right whale. And BOEM has said no, they have made a decision that the priority is the economics of the project over protecting the right whale. And NOAA apparently it does not have the teeth to stop that. If BOEM chooses to look past the requirements under the Endangered Species Act and how these projects be built, it would appear that they’re in violation of the Endangered Species Act. [Music]

“Thank you.”

[Music]

“In the period between August 2017 and August 2018 seven North Atlantic right whales died around Martha’s Vineyard in in that area in Southern New England Waters this is roughly equivalent to two percent of the population of the right whale Which is less than 350 remaining if we were talking about humans two percent of the human population will represent 160 million people so it’s a huge dent on a very small population of critically endangered species thank you.”

[Music]

“All righty.”

[Music]

“Let’s see if we can move our boat out of the way so these guys can help.”

“Okay we’re good so where’s the open ocean there it’s straight out that way you see them oh yeah yeah that’s open ocean right there we’ve got Harbor porpoise we get a minky whale.”

[Music]

“Yeah see how this water is all flat let’s see the bubbles right yeah yeah there’s probably a whale under there giveaway is a bird say that they they love them what the United States is looking at is thousands of wind turbines standing one thousand feet tall the massive blade spinning in an area that where the whales our whales our Dolphins our marine life where they live where they migrate where they breed it’s at a level that we can’t even understand now what the impacts will be and when we’re dealing with a critically endangered whale that is on the verge of Extinction which is the North Atlantic right whale our laws do not support the level of development that’s going to happen within the right whales habitat the whale lives nearly full time you know they do migrate but many of them do stay in Southern New England Waters year round and that’s a problem problem for the whales problem for the wind Developers but apparently it’s more a problem for the whales.”

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