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Performing a whale necropsy is immensely labor intensive, especially when they’re floating far offshore, stranded on remote or protected islands, or the corpse is highly decomposed. Only around half of the whales beached in the past seven years could be examined. One factor potentially driving misinformation about offshore wind is how challenging it is to get conclusive results from a necropsy-the animal version of an autopsy. NOAA’s fisheries department is currently investigating the 178 humpback whale mortalities reported between January 2016 and January 2023.Īt this point, says a NOAA spokesperson "there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales." This time, the perpetrator doesn't seem to be a virus.

This isn't the East Coast's first UME: in 1987, over 700 bottlenose dolphins were killed by a virus outbreak, and more than 1,600 met the same fate in 2013. While the recent elevation in East Coast strandings is concerning, thousands of sick, injured or lost marine animals beach themselves each year.

The cause of these deaths is hotly debated, with opponents of offshore wind farms recently claiming seismic surveys­–a tool for determining where to place wind turbines-as well as the construction and operation of wind turbines are behind the deaths.īut scientists disagree, and they worry the political debate over offshore wind could distract decision makers from holding the true culprits accountable and preventing more whale deaths.Įxperts like the Zoological Society of London’s Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP)’s Rob Deaville aren’t “at all” convinced that these deaths are related to wind farms. There has been such a marked increase in reported humpback deaths that scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have declared an Unusual Mortality Event ( UME). Whale carcasses have increasingly been washing ashore, often in an advanced state of decomposition. Since 2016, something strange has been happening on the U.S.