Another Dead Humpback Whale Washes Ashore in New York
A Rutgers University study published in the summer of 2022 showed humpback whales were returning to New York City waters.
I recently reported about the growing concerns that off-shore wind farms heralded as critical new energy sources by eco-activists may be responsible for a spate of whale deaths off New Jersey and New York shores.
Now another whale has washed ashore in New York.
A massive humpback whale was discovered washed up on the shores of Long Island, New York on Monday, the latest in a series of incidents in which a rash of dead whales have been spotted in the surrounding waters in recent months and along the East Coast.
The dead whale was found around 6:30 a.m. on Lido Beach in Nassau County, Fox New York reported. Emergency crews were trying to figure how to dispose of the marine mammal.
“This is by far the largest,” Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin told News 12. “The crews that have been here for almost two decades have never seen a whale this size. It’s 35-feet-long. Just pulling it up on the shore, we had to bring in a heavy crane. And the wires were snapping because of the tonage it was required to really bring it to higher ground.
This is the 10th whale that has beached in the region recently.
Researchers estimate the whale is 40 feet long and is believed to be about 5 years old.
The humpback is the 10th large whale to be stranded on Atlantic beaches — including on Long Island and New Jersey — in the past two months.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports 178 humpback whale strandings across 13 Atlantic states since 2016. The agency has labeled those deaths an “unusual mortality event” and says they are still being investigated.
NOAA says about half the whales found dead had been struck by vessels. Whether the whale found on Lido Beach was the victim of a vessel strike or died of some other means, the answer will be determined by experts from the Atlantic Marine Conversation Society.
Interestingly, a Rutgers University study published in the summer of 2022 showed humpback whales not only returning to New York City waters to feed every year but staying longer.
“We discovered that about half of the humpback whales seen in the New York City area stay for a month or longer and will return for 2 to 3 years in a row,” Danielle Brown, lead researcher for non-profit Gotham Whale, told The Post in an email.
The average stay for a humpback in the New York Bight Apex — the waters from Fire Island to the Manasquan Inlet in New Jersey — is 37.6 days, according to the study published earlier this month.
There’s not a lot of evidence to show that the whales were around consistently before this study, according to Brown. While they did visit the New York Bight, it was mainly in winter.
Meanwhile, the realities of wind energy are slowly blowing into the media.
If someone had taken a magic wand and instantly tripled the number of wind turbines in Kansas and Oklahoma this morning, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Calm winds mean no electricity.
The problem was not confined to the USA. This morning, I learned of a wind farm that produced negative wind energy for two days in Canada. Really! Story below.
For four days almost zero power. For two days the wind farm produced negative electricity!
How could it produce “negative” energy? The wind was so light during this period the blades were not turning. Because it takes power to run the farm (navigation lights, computers, etc.), the wind farm used one megawatt of electricity while producing zero. Negative energy.
Good policy is based on good data, sound choices based on that data, and accepting the realities when they run counter to the preferred narrative of the day.
I hope the causes of the whale deaths are accurately determined and appropriate choices are made when the information is revealed.
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Comments
Whale oil can be used for heating.
Windmills, but hey, kill all the eagles amd whales…
I hate these people
Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and bats. The greens are “studying” the little bodies.
https://undark.org/2023/01/23/wanted-by-scientists-dead-birds-and-bats-felled-by-renewables/
A Lease holder here in my area that I know, told me that they are required to keep the area below each windmill mowed so the windfarm owners can count the dead birds and bats on a regular basis
Of course, we never hear the results of those counts
Yet, we are not allowed to cut any dead or dying trees for months in that region because of the “endangered ” Indiana Brown Bat
Wind power is not worth the subsidies spend on it and do kill eagles, migratory birds, and bats. They also blight the landscape. But I am still trying to understand (maybe someone can explain) how off shore wind farms–that have not been built yet–are causing humpback and sperm whales to wash up on Long Island and New Jersey beaches. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 😬🤷🏻♀️🐋🐳
Probably choked to death on all those worthless face diapers they’re dumping in the ocean.
The Navy can’t use sonar off the California coast, because whales told animal rights maniacs that the sound was annoying.
But environmental maniacs can build wind farms anywhere, no matter how many whales they kill, because-because.
Now they can be a marine sanctuary city, too.
Only answer….dynamite!
Yeah… no. It didn’t work out so well for Florence.
Would you have ever heard of Florence if not for 1/2 ton of dynamite?
Here is what I bet is happening: There are big plans to install more offshore wind generators. But you can’t just plonk one down – you have to survey the area. A typical sea bed and sub-sea bed survey program will be running survey boats in a grid pattern, and the vessels will be towing streamer arrays behind them, a series of long cables with instruments on them. The purpose is to get very precise images of the seabed, the topography, any coral reefs or outcrops, any shipwrecks or other debris, and maybe even test for the presence of shallow gas or unstable sediments. If they are looking below the seabed with a profiler, they will need an energy source to generate acoustic waves – which are then recorded by the geophones in the streamers. The acoustic waves are typically generated by an air cannon, underwater -compressed air in high volumes, released in a burst. WE do the same thing in the oil & gas business – and we have to watch out for cetaceans when we do, because it is known to affect their behavior. What do you bet, they’re surveying right now? The whales have gotten disoriented and beached themselves because their directional sense has been affected.
They.don’t.care…
Good info. But even so, the enviro wackos will seize on any little blip to advance their causes, and so can we, to keep the stupid windmills out of the line-of-sight from the shore.
“They’re killing whales surveying for their wind farm. It must all STOP NOW!!!!!!”
Whatever works. By any means necessary. Learn from them.
What’s interesting is we aren’t getting the usual paragraphs in this media story. Where’s the paragraph about the data from 1910 and the hundred year trend alerting us to the horror? Where’s the breathless rush to blame this on some recent activity of mankind like ….construction of offshore wind farms? Commercial shipping as the culprit seems sketchy unless there’s a corresponding uptick in traffic.
They don’t want to report it at all, but it’s a bigger-than-elephant in the room/beach. So they have to write something.
Do we get to report humpback /wales as an endangered species recovery success, now?
Look at all the whales we’ve recovered in just three weeks!
Dare I suggest stacy abrams go for a dip around NYC?
Might be windmills but we don’t know the actual cause of the beachings yet. Could be an increased number of great white sharks chasing the whales into shallow waters where they beach.