Guess we'll just have to take King Donald's word on it
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| Researchers at the New England Aquarium spotted this right whale during an aerial survey in 2021. The Trump administration recently clawed back nearly $500,000 in federal funding for the aquarium's whale-monitoring program. (New England Aquarium; photo taken under NMFS Permit #19674) |
The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed offshore wind farms for whale deaths, contrary to scientific evidence. Now the administration is quietly abandoning key research programs meant to protect marine mammals living in an increasingly busy ocean.
The New England Aquarium and the Massachusetts Clean Energy
Center, both in Boston, received word from Interior Department officials last
month stating that the department was terminating funds for research to help
protect whale populations, effective immediately. The cut halted a 14-year-old
whale survey program that the aquarium staff had been carrying out from small
airplanes piloted over a swath of ocean where three wind farms — Vineyard
Wind 1, Sunrise Wind, and Revolution Wind — are now being built.
Federal officials did not publicly announce the cancellation
of funds. In a statement to Canary Media, a spokesperson for the New
England Aquarium confirmed the clawback, saying that a letter from
Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management dated Sept. 10 had “terminated the remaining funds
on a multi-year $1,497,453 grant, which totaled $489,068.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: On October 28, Bloomberg News reports that RFK Jr. has ordered the CDC to "probe the potential harms of offshore wind farms." This follows the pattern of Bobby Jr.'s abuse of the scientific method. Rather than have the science inform your conclusions, under Trump and Kennedy, you determine the conclusion and then twist the science to fit. - Will Collette
The aquarium is currently hosting the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a network of scientists that study one of the many large whale species that reside in New England’s waters. News of the cut to the aquarium’s research project has dampened the mood there. And rumors have been circulating among attendees about rollbacks to an even larger research program, a public-private partnership led by BOEM that tracks whales near wind farm sites from New England to Virginia.
Government emails obtained by Canary Media indicate
that BOEM is indeed shutting down the Partnership for an Offshore
Wind Energy Regional Observation Network (POWERON). Launched last year, the program expanded on a $5.8 million
effort made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, deploying a network
of underwater listening devices along the East Coast “to study the potential impacts
of offshore wind facility operations on baleen whales,” referring to the large
marine mammals that feed on small krill.
POWERON is a $4.7 million collaboration, still in
its infancy, in which wind farm developers pay BOEM to manage the
long-term acoustic monitoring for whales that’s required under project permits.
One completed wind farm, South
Fork Wind, and two in-progress projects, Revolution
Wind and Coastal
Virginia Offshore Wind, currently rely on POWERON to fulfill
their whale-protecting obligations.
With POWERON poised to end, wind developers must
quickly find third parties to do the work. Otherwise, they risk being out of
compliance with multiple U.S. laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act
and the Endangered Species Act. Dominion Energy, one of the wind developers
participating in POWERON, did not respond to a request for comment.
BOEM officials made no public announcement of POWERON’s
cancellation and, according to internal emails, encouraged staffers not to put
the news in writing.
“It essentially ended,” said a career employee at the
Interior Department who was granted anonymity to speak freely for fear of
retribution. The staffer described the government’s multimillion-dollar
whale-monitoring partnership as “a
body without a pulse.”
Using whales as a pawn in the war on renewables
The grim news of cuts coincided with the release of some
good news. On Tuesday, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium
published a new population estimate for the North Atlantic
right whale, an endangered species pushed to the brink of extinction by 18th-century
whaling. After dropping to an all-time low of just 358 whales
in 2020, the species, scientists believe, has now grown to 384 individuals.
Concern for the whale’s plight has been weaponized in recent years by anti–offshore
wind groups, members of Congress, and even President Donald Trump in an effort
to undermine the wind farms in federal court as well as in the court of public
opinion.
“If you’re into whales … you don’t want windmills,” said
Trump, moments after signing an executive order in January that froze
federal permitting and new leasing for offshore wind farms.
This view stands in stark contrast with conclusions made by
the federal agency tasked with investigating the causes of recent whale
groundings.
A statement posted on the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s website reads: “At
this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore
wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths. There
are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind
activities.”
Climate change has made it difficult for researchers to
discern the impacts of wind turbines on whales’ food supply.
A government-commissioned report released by the National Academies in 2023 concluded
that the impacts of New England’s offshore wind farms on the North Atlantic
right whale were hard to distinguish from the effects of a warming world.
For much of the past month, since the aquarium got word of
its funding being cut, its researchers have not been able to conduct
whale-spotting flights. During this time, construction on Vineyard Wind and
Revolution Wind in the southern New England wind energy area plowed forward.
Developers are required to have dedicated observers keeping
watch for marine mammals from all construction and survey vessels. But, when it
comes to spotting elusive leviathans, nothing quite beats a birds-eye
view. The aquarium’s work surveying whales is important for several reasons,
according to Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, an assistant professor at the University of
South Carolina, who called the clawback “disappointing.”
The project has generated America’s longest-running dataset
tracking whale movements near planned and active wind farm areas,
she said.
The aquarium’s aerial monitoring dates back to 2011,
when the footprints of today’s wind projects were first being sketched out.
Historically, North Atlantic right whales were known to feed near southern New
England during the winter and spring seasons. In 2022, the aquarium’s
dataset allowed researchers to make a remarkable discovery: Unlike in most places on the
East Coast, a small number of whales were appearing there year-round. The
scientists believe that warmer waters driven by climate change have made the
area an “increasingly
important habitat” for these whales.
Meyer-Gutbrod said the species’ newly established presence
should be a reason for the government to better scrutinize wind farm plans
and adapt construction activities.
“Monitoring in and around the lease sites is critical for
characterizing right whale distribution. The whales often have seasonal
patterns of habitat use, but these patterns are changing. We can’t rely
exclusively on historical surveys to guide future offshore development
projects,” said Meyer-Gutbrod.
She stressed the importance of continued monitoring to
better understand the well-documented hazards to these whales — vessel strikes
and rope entanglement from fishing activities — which carry on along the
margins of New England’s wind farms. Life-threatening entanglement has been
documented in the zone long monitored by aquarium staff. For example, in 2018,
aerial researchers were the first to identify that a male right whale,
known to scientists as #2310, was caught in fishing rope. A rescue team was
unsuccessful at dislodging the rope.
The Interior Department’s cuts come at a time when its
own leader is expressing concern for whale populations.
“I’ve got save-the-whale folks saying, ‘Why do you have 192 whale
groundings on the beaches of New England?’’” said Interior Secretary Doug
Burgum, at an event on Monday hosted by the American Petroleum Institute. He
said he was paying attention to people claiming that humpbacks, rights, and
other whale species started stranding en masse when “we started building these
things,” referring to turbines.
No evidence supports these claims. In fact, Tuesday’s news
that the North Atlantic right whale population grew by about 2% from 2023 to 2024 may
be the strongest rebuke of Burgum’s statements. That time period coincided with
the busiest time for U.S. offshore wind farm construction to date.
Since 2017, the imperiled whale has in fact experienced
an annual “unusual mortality event.” Between 10 and 35 whales
have shown up dead or seriously injured each year, many displaying injuries
consistent with a boat strike. Vineyard Wind 1, America’s first
commercial-scale offshore wind farm to get underway, didn’t start at-sea
construction until 2022.
Remarkably, there’s been no right whale deaths documented
in 2025 — even as five massive wind projects press on with
construction in their home range. Heather Pettis, a scientist with the New
England Aquarium, attributed this milestone to ongoing “management and conservation
efforts,” which include the kind of close monitoring just scuttled by federal
cuts.
The aquarium’s spokesperson told Canary Media that its
aerial survey team conducted a flight over the southern New England wind
energy area on Saturday “using
other funding.” It’s unclear how long the program can survive without federal
support.
On Monday, an aquarium staffer emailed a group of
external scientists, welcoming “any
suggestions that you might have for how to continue these surveys.”
Clare Fieseler ,
PhD, is a reporter at Canary Media covering offshore wind.
