Humpback whale washed up in Atlantic City had a head injury, officials say, as groups call for wind turbine inquiry

ATLANTIC CITY — A young humpback whale that washed up on an Atlantic City beach on Saturday had evidence of a large head injury behind the blowhole, 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.”

With environmental and citizens groups calling for a federal investigation into whether sonar mapping related to future wind turbine projects off the coast may have played a role in four recent humpback whale deaths in New Jersey, Dean said it was premature to conclude about a cause of death.

Others noted that the National Marine Fisheries Service has designated an unusual mortality event for humpback whales based on an increase in mortality that began in 2016, before any wind energy activity.

Dean said samples from the whale were being tested “to see what else might be going on.” She said the whale was partially decomposed, which might affect how much could be determined.

» READ MORE: Another humpback whale washes up in Atlantic City

The whale was the second to wash up in Atlantic City in 15 days. Another washed up in Strathmere on Dec. 10 and a fourth in North Wildwood in July.

On Sunday, following the necropsy, the 30-foot whale was buried in the sand on the beach where it washed ashore, just in front of Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall. Local officials will continue to add sand so that it does not resurface.

A coalition of groups expressing alarm about the impact of coming wind turbines gathered there Monday afternoon at a spot Cindy Zipf, head of Clean Ocean Action, called “a tragic, grim welcome mat,” to the coming offshore wind facilities, the smell from the buried whale still hovering in the air.

Zipf called on the Biden administration to conduct a full investigation into the whale deaths to see if there’s any connection to the wind turbine projects she says are being fast-tracked without proper pilot testing.

“It’s too much, too fast,” she said. “It’s outrageous and our ocean deserves better.”

Lauren Gaches, an NOAA fisheries spokesperson, said the unusual mortality event (UME) predated any offshore wind activities in the Atlantic Ocean and said 174 humpback whales had died.

Partial or full necropsy examinations were conducted on about half of the whales, she said, and about 40% had evidence of either a ship strike or entanglement. “To date, no humpback whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activities,” she said.

The groups, including citizen groups Protect our Coast NJ and Defend Brigantine Beach, cited six whale deaths, including two in New York, in what they described as an “unprecedented wave of whale deaths.”

They noted that the companies have 11 active “Incidental Take Authorizations” from the National Marine Fisheries, which amount, said Suzanne Hornick of Protect Our Coast NJ, to a “license to kill.”

However, Gaches, the federal spokesperson, said NOAA Fisheries has not issued any incidental take authorization that attributes the mortality or injury of any marine mammal related to offshore wind activities and described them as “incidental harassment authorizations.”

Ørsted, a global offshore wind company, has state approval to build New Jersey’s first turbines that should start produce power by the end of 2024. The company has not started construction.

Maddy Urbish, Ørsted’s head of government affairs, said the company uses “state-of-the-art technical equipment to avoid any impact on marine wildlife,” and said combating climate change would reduce threats to marine life.

An impact statement on the wind project from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said there are 1,369 humpback whales in the area.

Dean, of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, noted that warmer waters have led to a large population of whales off New Jersey’s coast, which could explain the deaths.

“It’s pretty much common sense,” she said. “They’re out there.”

She said it takes time for the samples to yield any conclusions. A full necropsy was not performed on the whale that washed up Dec. 23 near the Tropicana, because it was an especially cold and windy day, and officials decided to bury the animal quickly.

Danielle Brown, lead researcher for Gotham Whale, an advocacy and educational group, noted the increase in deaths dating back six years.

”This is not something that just happened in 2022 or 2023,” said Brown, a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources.

Brown said the primary cause of whale deaths has come when they collide with ships or get entangled in fishing gear.

The number of whales in the area has increased over the past decade as they follow schools of menhaden for food, Brown said. ”So it does make sense that an increase in whales in the area would lead to an increase in strandings.”

Still, the recent whale deaths have rallied calls to halt the wind farms off the coast of New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy has set a goal of producing 11,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2040.

“We’ve worked all those years to stop ocean pollution, to stop ocean dumping, to stop liquefied natural gas facilities, to stop off shore oil drilling,” Zipf said. “And this ocean has come back so beautifully. Marine life is thriving. Now we’re going to be facing a huge industrialization.”

New Jersey has approved several utility-scale offshore wind projects: Ocean Wind 1, approved in 2019, is owned by the global company Ørsted and Public Service Enterprise Group, parent company of PSE&G — the state’s largest power company.

Their 98 turbines would span an area from 15 to 27 miles starting southeast of the Atlantic City coast and would generate 1,100 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than 500,000 homes. Construction has not yet begun.

The BPU has approved two other wind projects: a 1,510 megawatt wind farm by EDF/Shell called Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, and a 1,148-megawatt wind farm also by Ørsted and known as Ocean Wind 2. Another project is up for approval in 2023.

The BOEM filed a draft environmental impact statement last year for the Ocean Wind 1 project, calling for testing on the impact construction sounds would have on whales, such as driving for the massive monopiles that will serve as foundations for turbines.

More than 10,846 strikes are expected per pile with a rate of 50 strikes per minute.

Bob Stern of Save Long Beach Island Inc. said the group had cautioned the Fisheries Service a year ago that they were underestimating noise impacts on marine mammals.

Whales, most often endangered right whales, have been used as a rallying cry for conservative and fossil-fuel-industry-aligned groups fighting offshore wind projects.

The groups that gathered on the beach in Atlantic City on Monday dismissed any connection to those interests and said they only took donations from individuals.

Protect Our Coast NJ raises donations for the Ocean Environment Legal Defense Fund through its Facebook group and a web page. The fund is administered by the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware based group that originated as a conservative nonprofit, but now bills itself as nonpartisan.

Hornick said the institute has no role in the group’s activities beyond holding its funds.

The Heartland Institute, a national libertarian think tank, recently filed comments with the BOEM against an offshore wind project in Virginia “to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.”

The Heartland Institute has been closely aligned with fossil fuel and conservative groups in the past, including ExxonMobil, the Mercer family, and Koch Industries, though it no longer discloses its funding sources, according to DeSmog, which tracks climate denial efforts.

The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered whales with less than 350 left. The Heartland Institute’s comment said that the 2.6-gigawatt Virginia project “would generate noise levels far in excess of the 120-decibel level which National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has determined is the maximum safe operational level for underwater sound.”