Offshore Wind Farms Kill Whales, but Do Greenies Care? By James Reed

Whatever happened to the Greenie mantra of save the whales? Where are those Green guys and gals in the little boats, who were out on the waves to stop whalers? There have been numerous whale deaths across the world, especially the US on the east coast. This corresponds to the construction of offshore wind farms, which the government says are not in any way harming the whales. But, a new documentary Thrown to The Wind, by director and producer Jonah Markowitz, refutes this. It is shown, using advanced hydrophones that the high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels, is directly correlated with whale deaths.

It is ironic that the issue of whale deaths is not being protested by the mainstream Green and environmental groups, who see that if such internal inconsistencies come out about wind farms, the entire narrative will begin to collapse, which it must, and will.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/26/new-documentary-proves-that-offshore-windfarms-kill-whales/

“The increase in whale, dolphin, and other cetacean deaths off the East Coast of the United States since 2016 is not due to the construction of large industrial wind turbines, U.S. government officials say.

Their scientists have done the research, they say, to prove that whatever is killing the whales is completely unrelated to the wind industry. 

But now, a new documentary, “Thrown To The Wind,” by director and producer Jonah Markowitz, which I executive produced, proves that the US government officials have been lying.

The film documents surprisingly loud, high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones. And it shows that the wind industry’s increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths.

My nonprofit organization, Environmental Progress, which is independent of all energy interests, funded the documentary because, like millions of Americans, we love whales and believe their extinction is an avoidable tragedy 

The species in question is the North Atlantic right whale. Its population has dropped to 340 from over 400 over the last few years.

And, there have been more than 60 recorded whale deaths of all species on the East Coast since Dec 1, 2022, a number that increased markedly since 2016 when the wind industry started to ramp up. 

The documentary may not stop the industrial wind projects from being built. After all, the wind projects are going forward despite urgent warnings from leading conservation groups and a top scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

But our documentary has hit a nerve. Within the first 48 hours of it being online, over 20,000 people re-posted it, and over 6 million people total, across two tweets, have viewed the posts with the embedded trailer for “Thrown To The Wind.”

And, now, Republican members of Congress tell me they want to hold hearings to investigate.

I have been involved in a lot of great causes in the 35 years that I have been politically active. This one, saving the whales, is easily one of the most noble and important. One of my first political memories as a boy was the Greenpeace “Save the Whales” sticker in my father’s food co-op. 

Whales touch something deep within us. They care deeply for their offspring. They form communities. They sing.

Whales are, as the conservationists in “Thrown to the Wind” explain, magnificent spiritual beings, not just great biological ones.

There appear to be at least two distinct mechanisms by which wind industry activities are killing whales.

The first is through boat traffic in areas where there hasn’t historically been traffic. The second is through high-decibel sonar mapping that can disorient whales, separate mothers from their calves, and send them into harm’s way, either into boat traffic or poorer feeding grounds.

Whale deaths caused by boat strikes are not unrelated to windfarm works — as some have sought to claim — but fueled by them.

The waters around New York and New Jersey have seen three humpbacks die in August alone; two of them had blunt force trauma while the third was too decomposed for a necropsy.

Shot in the hand-held style made famous by Paul Greengrass, the creator and director of the Jason Bourne movies, Markowitz’s “Thrown To The Wind” gives the experience of being on the ocean and in the room with the film’s stars, Lisa Linowes, who correlated the whale deaths to wind industry activity with Eric Turner, and Rob Rand.

Linowes is a lifelong environmental activist, data analyst, and co-founder of the Save the Right Whales Coalition.

She’s also an obsessive data nerd who, working with her husband, sold their start-up software company over a decade ago and moved to New England where she does her conservation work full-time and without pay.

Rand, meanwhile, is a conservationist and one of the world’s leading underwater acoustics experts with over 30 years of experience.

The commitment by Markowitz to investigative documentary filmmaking led him to go out on the ocean with Rand to measure the sound of industrial wind activity.

It was on that trip that Rand and his team discovered high-decibel sound emissions that appeared to violate NOAA’s protective standards for marine life. 

When combined with the work of Linowes and Turner, correlating whale deaths with wind industry vessel traffic, Rand’s acoustic research should have far-reaching implications, including halting all industrial wind activity along the East Coast.

After a dead whale washed ashore on Takanassee Beach in New Jersey two weeks ago, police blocked off the area so tractors could be brought in to remove it.

“We were sitting on the beach yesterday, and I noticed it when people started running up to it,” Soraya Nimaroff, who lives nearby, told the Ashbury Park Press. “I’m very sad. It is very sad.”

Our research shouldn’t have been necessary. Dr. Sean Hayes, a top NOAA scientist warned last year that industrial wind projects “could have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species.”

“Population-level effects” include extinction.”