By James FitzPatrick
Contributing Writer
The recent whale deaths along the South Jersey coast have residents and politicians blaming Ocean Wind 1, and its builder Orsted.
Politicians and environmental groups have urged that all activities on the project come to a halt while potential causes can be further studied.
The danger of doing harm to a small number of marine mammals has long been anticipated as a potential consequence of building wind farms off the coast. Knowing the risk, Orsted applied for an exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act in February from NOAA Fisheries authorizing an “incidental take” of marine mammals in the process of building and operating Ocean Wind 1.
The requested rulemaking letter would allow Ocean Wind to “take” or disrupt the habits or potentially do physical harm to a small number of sea mammals in the course of building up to 98 wind turbine generators and three offshore substations off our coast.
Under Marine Mammal Protection Act, “take” means to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal. It refers to activities that have the potential to injure a marine mammal or their stock in the wild, or have the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering. The requested permit would cover five years.
The potentially harmful activities include pile driving, detonation of unexploded ordnance, munitions and explosives, and high-resolution geophysical (HRG) site characterization surveys conducted by Ocean Wind.
Potentially affected species include North Atlantic right whale, humpback whale, fin whale, sei whale, minke whale, sperm whale, long-finned pilot whale, common bottlenose dolphin, short-beaked common dolphin, Atlantic white-sided dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin, Risso’s dolphin, harbor porpoise, harbor seal and gray seal.
As of this writing the permit had been issued, according to the NOAA website. Public comment closed in December.
Read more about the Ocean Wind incidental take application at shorturl.at/mvWZ2
Copyeditor and Contributing Writer James FitzPatrick has been a community journalist in Atlantic and Cape May counties for more than 30 years, including 20 years as editor of The Current Newspapers. He lives in Hammonton.
