IN-DEPTH: New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Development Worries Activists

BELMAR, N.J.—Somewhere off the Jersey Shore, it became clear that the Parker Pete Express wasn’t likely to encounter any whales.

Conservation biologist Trisha DeVoe, the boat’s designated cetacean spotter, broke off an interview with The Epoch Times to speak with the captain. She wanted him to steer the boat towards land.

“I think we’re too far off,” she said.

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Like others on the three-hour-plus tour, Ms. DeVoe worries that wind power development in the area threatens humpback whales, right whales, and other species, not to mention fishing, tourism, and property values.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC), which specializes in addressing marine mammal and sea turtle strandings along New Jersey’s coast, recorded nine humpback whale strandings in 2023 alone–a high number even amid a generally upward trend for such incidents since 2016.

“We know that this isn’t normal,” Ms. DeVoe told a small knot of journalists as the boat departed Belmar Marina.

“One thing we know for sure that’s different,” she continued, “is there’s a lot of offshore wind activity.”

Right now, she and other activists aboard the Parker Pete Express are particularly concerned about ongoing vessel surveys for wind energy projects off the coast of New Jersey. Hundreds of turbines could soon fringe the Garden State, some as close as nine miles from land.

It’s part of a broader trend of rapid, large-scale offshore wind development along the East Coast. With the Biden administration aiming to add 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2030, the Department of the Interior has approved multiple large offshore wind projects, the latest just weeks ago in late August.

Another passenger, activist Bob Stern, told reporters he believes the noise from “sparkers,” devices used to profile sediment hundreds of meters below the seafloor, has been “seriously underestimat[ed].”

A former Department of Energy official who oversaw its Office of Environmental Compliance, Mr. Stern currently leads Save Long Beach Island, a nonprofit focused on shielding that tourism-dependent coastal community from Ocean Wind’s Atlantic Shores project.

“We’re conducting a very dangerous experiment here,” Mr. Stern told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

David Shanker of the Save Right Whales Coalition NJ laid out one potential scenario for whales caught up amid intensive surveying.

“Whales are being bombarded by these [ships] that are currently surveying the ocean bottom. They’re disoriented… Calves are getting separated from their mothers,” Mr. Shanker said to the journalists clustered on the boat.

What evidence would make Mr. Shanker’s scenario plausible?

Activist Bonnie Brady of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association told The Epoch Times that the damning evidence is obvious: “Young dead whales.”

Indeed, data from the MMSC show that many humpback deaths from winter 2023 were of sub-adult females.

For now, agencies and some other close observers are hesitant to link the development of wind turbines to whale and dolphin strandings.

A web page for New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) states that the agency “is aware of no credible evidence that offshore wind-related survey activities could cause whale mortality.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries take a very similar position.

On the other hand, both agencies’ web pages emphasize the dangers to whales from climate change—the factor typically cited as the justification for the rapid scale-up of offshore wind energy in spite of some observers’ fears.

Sheila Dean, the director of the MMSC, said that, “At this point, we don’t know what exactly is killing these whales.”

“I kind of think it’s not that unusual,” she said.

Ms. Dean pointed out that a much bigger rash of bottlenose dolphin deaths in the Mid-Atlantic during the eighties came down to an outbreak of cetacean morbillivirus.

“Things just kind of go in patterns and waves,” she said.

Mr. Stern acknowledged that no one has directly observed whales responding aberrantly to noise from the survey vessels along the Jersey Shore.

Trash and pollutants dumped at sea and fast-moving ships are some of Ms. Dean’s biggest concerns when it comes to the animals she monitors.

“People think that they can just run full speed through a pod of whales, and they shouldn’t be able to do that,” Ms. Dean said.

As for the big offshore wind projects, she stressed that she doesn’t know enough to weigh in with much confidence.

She acknowledged that the turbines are “taking up a lot of space.”

“Is that the right thing to do?” she asked.

For all the official uncertainty around wind turbines and whales, the speakers aboard the Parker Pete Express made it clear they don’t think the wind turbine surveying along New Jersey and other parts of the Eastern seaboard is so harmless.

Their counterattack starts, but doesn’t end, with litigation.

The Lawsuits

Save Long Beach Island, the organization led by Mr. Stern, is suing NOAA Fisheries and its parent agency, the Department of Commerce, over the decision to grant incidental harassment authorizations to wind energy developers off the coast of New Jersey and New York.

Those authorizations allow for a certain amount of noise during surveying. Active ones for Atlantic Shores and other developers permit Level B harassment—that is, harassment that could potentially disturb, but not injure, whales or other marine mammal stocks in the wild.

The Save Long Beach Island complaint, filed in New Jersey’s federal district court, contends that site characterization for the turbines has risen to a higher level of harassment under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

According to the complaint, recent whale and dolphin deaths are “clear evidence that Level A harassment takes are occurring (injury and even worse—death).”

“Yet, virtually no Level A takes were requested in any of the approved and pending [authorizations],” it continues.

The plaintiffs went on to amend their suit, asking for an injunction in a later filing.

“We thought the court would act on it quickly. They did not,” Mr. Stern told The Epoch Times in a Sept. 12 interview.

Since then, the legal back-and-forth has continued—and it’s just the beginning.

In a Sept. 12 email, Mr. Stern shared a table outlining eleven legal interventions his team has taken or plans to take

Aided by the Texas Public Policy Institute, she and other fishing industry plaintiffs are up against various government agencies, including the Department of the Interior, which offers leases for offshore wind projects under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

That law provides that “the right to navigation and fishing therein shall not be affected” by how it is interpreted.

Ms. Lapp focused on that crucial word, “shall.”

“If I say, ‘You shall eat your vegetables for dinner,’ it’s not an option, right?” she told The Epoch Times on the boat.

“We cannot operate our gear and our vessels safely in a wind farm, so they will become closed areas to us,” she added.

That initial lawsuit hasn’t been resolved even as construction on Vineyard Wind proceeds. Although the judge rejected an initial motion for a stay, they’ve appealed the decision.

She expects the lawsuit will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court.

“That language in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act–it’s never been litigated before,” Ms. Lapp said.

The Department of the Interior declined to comment on Ms. Lapp’s lawsuit, and NOAA Fisheries declined to comment on the Save Long Beach Island case.

“We are unable to comment on matters of litigation,” a NOAA Fisheries spokesperson said in a Sept. 14 email.

A Government Watchdog, an As-Yet-Unscheduled Congressional Hearing

Litigation challenging the agencies is one element of the activists’ counterattack.

In July, one of the local lawmakers who helped make that inquiry a reality, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), had positive things to say about what the GAO is doing.

“I had a very thorough conference call with them [the GAO], and they had all their main people on,” he told The Epoch Times then.

“I have confidence that they’re going to really dig into this,” he added.

On the boat, Mr. Stern described the GAO investigation as “long overdue.”

He questioned why Congress hasn’t taken a more active role in checking the executive branch’s push for offshore wind development on a massive scale.

“This entire program of populating the entire East Coast with 3,000 wind turbines–that’s an enormous undertaking. It’s changing the character of the coast,” he said.

“They’re industrializing the oceans,” Mr. Shanker interjected.

“They wouldn’t do it at a National Park. They wouldn’t do it in the Grand Canyon. Why do they feel it’s okay to do it here?” he asked.

Mr. Van Drew appears to be angling for more Congressional oversight, in line with the activists’ concerns.

In a Sept. 12 email, a spokesperson for Mr. Van Drew’s office said the Congressman is coordinating with the House Committee on Natural Resources to arrange a hearing on offshore wind. The spokesperson indicated that the hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Another New Jersey federal representative who helped initiate the GAO investigation, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), did not immediately respond to my requests for comment.

With the surveying well underway, large-scale offshore wind along the Jersey Shore is more than a hypothetical. Yet, it isn’t a foregone conclusion either.

“I support the responsible development of alternative energy sources. Right now, what we’re seeing is irresponsible development of offshore wind,” Mr. Shanker told The Epoch Times as the Parker Pete Express plied the calm waters north of Belmar.

As he spoke, it was hard to picture wind turbines in their rows, fencing in the far horizon.

If Mr. Stern, Ms. DeVoe, and others on the boat win out, that vision could remain just that–a vision, understood in time as a mirage.