Exclusive — NJ Fishing Pros Warn Offshore Wind Killing Ocean Life: ‘Never Seen Anything Remotely Like This’ in Half a Century

New Jersey’s veteran fishing community fears surveying to install offshore wind turbines near the state’s shore is already causing tremendous environmental damage, one local boat captain told Breitbart News, asserting that, in his experience, “dead whales on our beach absolutely and logically have everything to do with the oceanic geo-surveys.”

New Jersey is in the process of approving two major offshore wind projects: the Ocean Wind I and II initiatives owned by the Danish “green” energy company Ørsted. Radical leftist Governor Phil Murphy ordered a massive restructuring of the state’s power grid in September to become reliant on “100 percent clean energy by 2035” that has enjoyed enthusiastic support from the White House, which approved Ocean Wind I in July.

To install the wind turbines necessary for the projects, engineers must survey and map the ground floor to find the ground best able to sustain the massive structures. The survey work being done in anticipation of the installation of these turbines has coincided with a massive increase in the number of dead whales and other marine mammals off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.

As of June, scientists have documented at least 14 humpback and minke whales washing ashore dead in the two states compared to nine in all of 2022. Between December and May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) documented 25 dead whales washing ashore along the entirety of the East Coast, nine in New Jersey. The whales washing ashore are dramatic affairs, as they have on several occasions appeared on boardwalk beaches frequented by families, alarming locals.

Most whales who have undergone autopsies after washing ashore showed signs of blunt trauma, suggesting they died by hitting ships.

Veteran fishermen in New Jersey, who have spent decades studying the sea, say the whale deaths and those of other marine mammals are unprecedented and insist a relationship must exist between the surveying and the deaths. As marine mammals use sonar, the theory suggests that the surveying is disrupting the animals’ ability to know where ships are and thus avoid hitting them. NOAA insists that it has no scientific evidence linking the surveying – which, like whales, dolphins, and porpoises, uses sonar for echolocation – to the whale deaths.

“At this point, there is no evidence that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys,” NOAA’s website reads.

Robert Bogan, the captain of the Gambler recreational fishing vessel in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, said in a letter to his Congressman, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), shared with Breitbart News this week that the whale deaths present an entirely new phenomenon to him – something unless in the over half a century Capt. Bogan has spent regularly taking his customers out to fish.

The Gambler is what is commonly known in the Jersey Shore region as a party boat – it offers tickets for individual trips to sea for fishermen and provides the service of finding the fish, aiding new fishermen with basic training, providing bait, and fileting the catches. It has been in operation since 1949 as a local family business. It offers trips closer to shore – for species such as summer flounder (fluke) in the summer – and trips further out for tuna and other large catches in the colder months, meaning its crew are familiar with the conditions of the sea year-round.

“My business runs 10 months out of the year and we employ up to 10 people. Many other businesses in our shore community depend on our business –as we do those businesses,” Bogan explained. “I find it very disturbing that the powers backing the offshore windmill development would claim that there is no correlation between wind research development and the dead whales that continue to wash up on our beaches.”

“In my 50+ years of working on the ocean, I have never seen anything remotely like this,” he emphasized. “Dead whales on our beach absolutely and logically have everything to do with the oceanic geo-surveys.”

“NOAA was so concerned about slowing our boats down to less than 10 knots (basically a crawl), so as not to strike a whale and yet they signed-off on these invasive surveys, and admitted there would be an ‘acceptable’ whale mortality involved,” Bogan wrote. “Now, they don’t want to admit there was any mortality coinciding with wind research.”

Contrary to assurances on NOAA’s website, a Bloomberg News report in November unearthed a report from NOAA protected species expert Sean Hayes who warned the wind projects “will likely cause added stress that could result in additional population consequences to a species that is already experiencing rapid decline,” referring to whales.

“If these whales are dying from boat strikes, then how do we explain the deaths of many porpoises that have playfully swam the bow-wakes of ships for centuries?” he asked. “In all my years working the ocean: winter, spring, summer and fall — we have never hit, have seen or know of any boater who has hit a whale.”

Bogan described himself as initially “open-minded” about offshore wind, but feels “lied to” about the environmental damage.

“We only know of the whales that were hurt by seismic and sonar research because they float when dead. What of all the other effected sea life that did not come to the surface?” he asked.

Asked about the letter, Rep. Smith told Breitbart News that Bogan’s experiences and concerns were representative of a growing chorus of voices of maritime professionals at the Shore.

“Captain Robert Bogan and numerous recreational and commercial fisherman — who know our sea better than anyone else — have reached out to me with serious, first-hand observations regarding the aggressive offshore wind industrialization of our Jersey Shore,” Rep. Smith said.  “Tragically, their alarming insights about these unprecedented offshore wind projects and the resulting permanent transformation of our marine seascape continue to be ignored by Governor Phil Murphy and the Biden Administration.”

“The hardworking members of our community who depend on the sea for their livelihoods, and who contribute enormously to our economy, deserve to have their concerns thoroughly addressed—not trivialized, mocked or dismissed,” the Congressman added.

Bogan’s observations in recreational fishing are consistent with those of New Jersey’s commercial anglers.

“The commercial fishing is extremely upset with the visual observations of dead whales floating at sea,” Brick Wenzel, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey’s, fishing liaison and a longtime commercial fisherman, told Breitbart News in March. “One vessel said they had seen 3 different whales in one trip. Another had parts of a whale come up in their net. Most of the captains are generational fishers and are in their 60s — No one has heard of or [has] seen anything like the carnage being witnessed.”

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), whose district borders Rep. Smith’s to the south, similarly told Breitbart News in March that fishermen in his district have been alarmed by the situation for some time out of both fear for the environmental damage and concerns that the wind turbines will harm their fishing grounds.

“The fishermen have always been concerned, but it wasn’t just enough when it was just the fishermen,” Rep. Van Drew (R-NJ) asserted. “And now what’s happened is, over time, because of the whales, because of people realizing what these things are going to look like — we’re going to industrialize the Jersey Shore.”

Reps. Van Drew and Smith led a hearing in Wildwood, New Jersey, (Van Drew’s district) in March in which experts testified that, in addition to concerns about the potential mass killing of marine life, the offshore wind turbine projects appeared to interfere with military missions.

“NASA has said that these areas interfere with all their missions out of Wallops Island; the Navy has said there is not an area in that whole lease block that does not interfere with DOD [Department of Defense] missions, but BOEM [the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management] is continuing ahead,” Meghan Lapp, the fisheries liaison for the Rhode Island commercial fishing company Seafreeze, said at the event. “When I’ve asked them on webinars, like – the Navy said that this is a problem how can you still be leasing it? ‘Well, we’re just going to be continuing the discussions.’”

Other concerns regarding the offshore wind facilities are the unclear science regarding disposal of used wind turbines, potential threats to migrating birds, and few answers regarding whether or not the turbines could survive major hurricane damage, which New Jersey occasionally experiences.

In response to the lack of clarity regarding the Ocean Wind projects, Rep. Smith spearheaded an effort to begin an investigation into the plan by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which confirmed a probe in June. The GAO will reportedly investigate potential effects on “the environment, the fishing industry, military operations, navigational safety, and more.”

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