In a little over a month, six whales have washed up on the length of Mid-Atlantic beaches that stretch from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Montauk Point, New York, with two of them coming ashore in Atlantic City within 3 weeks of each other. The events locals are calling “unprecedented” are causing people to wonder what the frick frack is going on.

2nd whale to wash ashore in AC in 2 weeks raises questions

A beached whale caused quite a stir in Atlantic City over the weekend, and it’s not an isolated incident.

Seeing a 30-foot humpback whale washed ashore on Atlantic City’s beach was not how Daryl Bulthuis expected to start his Saturday morning.

“It’s kind of cool to see, but it’s kind of sad,” Bulthuis said. “I’ve been living here for 17 years and I’ve seen nothing like it.”

Well, it could be the sonar causing problems. There are supposedly up to 11 companies banging all over the ocean bottom just offshore of southern New Jersey engaged in wind farm surveying. But in this particular whale death, it’s not likely to have been what killed the poor thing. A necropsy of the huge carcass found out he’d been whacked pretty severely.

A young humpback whale that washed up on an Atlantic City beach on Saturday had evidence of a head injury, a large hematoma located just behind the blow hole, an official from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said Monday.

“The only thing we suspect may have happened is that it was hit by a large boat,” said Sheila Dean, executive director of the Brigantine-based center. “There was a big hematoma.”

In point of fact, accidents and whale deaths are becoming more prevalent along the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. NOAA’s been studying humpback mortality for over 6 years now – well before the sonar surveying started…

…NOAA said it has been studying what it calls “unusual mortality events” involving 174 humpback whales along the entire U.S. East Coast since January 2016. Agency spokesperson Lauren Gaches said that period pre-dates offshore wind preparation activities in the region.

About 40% showed evidence of having been struck by a ship or having become entangled in ropes, lines or fishing gear, she added.

…and part of the problem, illuminated recently, is that humpbacks have suddenly taken a liking to the Jersey Shore. They’re hanging around longer and there are more of them doing so. In October, a father and son out fishing met one of the new neighbors who just kind of dropped in unannounced.

In a way, though, this really odd string of carcasses washing ashore is performing a service, whether it truly is sonar surveying causing some of the deaths or not. It’s bringing a whole boatload of attention to the renewable energy schemes of NJ’s rodential governor, Phil Murphy. In September, he announced an almost 50% increase in the state’s wind-power goal and is thinking of raising it yet again. Murphy literally wants the waters off the Jersey coast bristling with towers.

New Jersey plans to ramp up its reliance on offshore wind, now with a new executive order from Gov. Phil Murphy to increase the state’s goal for building wind farms off the coast.

Murphy, speaking Wednesday at an event in New York City for Climate Week, increased the state’s target of 7,500 megawatts from wind turbines by 2035 to 11,000 MW by 2040. The move underscores the importance of offshore wind in achieving the administration’s transition to a 100% clean-energy economy by mid-century.

…In announcing the increased offshore wind goal, a jump of nearly 50%, Murphy also talked about a further expansion that may be in the offing. The state Board of Public Utilities was directed in the executive order to study the feasibility of raising the target further.

“Offshore wind is the best way to reach New Jersey’s clean renewable energy mandates and Gov. Murphy’s executive order cements the reality that offshore wind will continue to expand over the next decade plus,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey.

The first project that has come on board, held public meetings (some via Zoom, so not sure how effective or public those are), and hopes to start erecting towers in 2024 is Ocean Wind 1, slated to be located 15 mi off the southern NJ coast. The plan is for 99 towers and 1100MW of electricity generation capacity.

Slick little website they have, too. It was kind of interesting digging through it. Mostly platitudes, repetition of Murphy’s goals, how wonderful wind was, etc. I never did find a place where they specified the number of towers for all the megawatts (Eventually, I found that in one of these other news articles – that should tell you something.). The company with the contract is European – Danish, in fact – and speaks all the EU/WEF argle-bargle perfectly. No wonder a weasel like Murphy is buying it.

The Ørsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, renewable hydrogen and green fuels facilities, and bioenergy plants. Moreover, Ørsted provides energy products to its customers. Ørsted is the only energy company in the world with a science-based net-zero emissions target as validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), and Ørsted aims to deliver a net-positive biodiversity impact from all new renewable energy projects it commissions from 2030 at the latest. Ørsted ranks as the world’s most sustainable energy company in Corporate Knights’ 2022 index of the Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world and is recognised on the CDP Climate Change A List as a global leader on climate action. Headquartered in Denmark, Ørsted employs over 8,000 people. Ørsted’s shares are listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen (Orsted). In 2021, the group’s revenue was DKK 77.7 billion (EUR 10.4 billion).

On their About the Project page, there’s a statement about where they are, process-wise…

Project stages

Currently, the Ocean Wind project is in its development stage which consists of the following:

• Conducting environmental studies and geological studies to support the permitting and engineering of the wind farm

• Members of our team are also presenting project overviews to elected officials, community groups, and other external stakeholders

• Holding open houses throughout southern New Jersey to make sure the public has every opportunity to learn more about the project and what it means for their community

• Procurement teams are meeting with local suppliers to learn how their businesses can assist Ocean Wind and enter the American offshore wind industry

…but there are also two kind of creepy videos at the bottom depicting what the project will look like from shore. The first is a daylight view, but the second is a dark screen with a radar depiction in the lower right. If you watch, you’ll see a tiny blip representing an aircraft approaching an “obstruction field” grid. Something is triggered as the plane comes within a certain distance of the turbines, and the whole field lights up. You can see the grid in the corner, but the view from the shore is what’s freaky. All these red, blinking lights suddenly start to grow in intensity in the darkness at sea, until the skyline is pulsing. Who wants to see that however many times a night?

Orsted and its NJ partner are getting pushback from beach towns about those cables coming onshore, too. The companies are choosing, as one might expect, the path of least resistance. Surprisingly, it is not the path that was in their proposal, and the folks in the communities where they want to run the cables in now are speaking up.

The media focus on the whales has gone national. That may well help bring more awareness to people in the state outside of the shore who weren’t really paying attention to Trenton and usually try to avoid whatever’s coming out of Murphy’s mouth. It made the CBS Evening News the other night and I’ll bet a ton of viewers saw it last night on Jesse Watters.

Wind Surveying is KILLING our Whales #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/1EDNHz7y36

— Jesse Watters Primetime (@jesseprimetime) January 12, 2023

Good luck to them. The environmental groups have written Biden, but even if he had a clue, he’s busy right now ducking incoming. Besides, turbines and solar are all his babies, so I don’t see any relief for them from that quarter. They’re going to have to gather up some serious people power to fight this.

Having gotten a good leg up with the publicity – God bless the whales – it’s going to take all the disparate interests from environmental and municipalities to citizens working cohesively to take the wind out of the project’s sails blades.