Are wind
turbines killing whales? You are here: Home › All Posts › Are wind turbines
killing whales? March 4, 2016 by Paul Driessen and Mark Duchamp, 7 Comments
Between January 9 and February 4
this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch
beaches. Environmentalists and the news media offered multiple explanations –
except the most obvious and likely one: offshore wind farms.
Indeed, that area has the world’s
biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence
that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and
navigation.
However, Britain’s Guardian looked
for answers everywhere but in the right place. That’s not surprising, as it
tends to support wind energy no matter the cost to people or the environment.
After consulting with a marine environmental group, the paper concluded:
“The North Sea acts as a trap.… It’s virtually impossible for [whales] to find
their way out through the narrow English Channel.”
No it’s not. These intelligent
animals would naturally have found their way to and through the Channel by
simply following the coast of England or continental Europe. But the author
seems determined to pursue his “explanation,” even when it becomes increasingly
illogical. “The [trapped] whales become dehydrated because they obtain their
water from squid,” he argues, before acknowledging that “the dead Dutch and
German animals were well-fed,” and that the North Sea’s squid population has
increased in recent years.
The article discards Royal Navy
sonar and explosives, because “big naval exercises in UK waters are unusual in
midwinter.” Finally, the author concludes with this quote from his purported
expert: “When there’s a mass stranding, it’s always wise to look at possible
human effects. But, at the moment, I don’t see anything pointing in that
direction.” He should look a bit harder. Not everyone is so blind.
Indeed, “researchers at the
University of St. Andrews have found that the noise made by offshore wind farms
can interfere with a whale’s sonar, and can in tragic cases see them driven
onto beaches where they often die,” a UK Daily Mail article observed.
It is certainly possible that
permanent damage to the cetaceans’ middle and inner ears, and thus to their
built-in sonar, can result from large air guns used
during seismic surveys and from violent bursts of noise associated with pilings
being rammed into the rock bed. Wind promoters themselves admit that their
pile-driving can be heard up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) underwater, and can be
harmful to whales that happen to be nearby. But unless these injuries cause
external bleeding, they are very difficult to detect.
Natural phenomena such as seaquakes,
underwater volcanic eruptions and meteorites crashing into the oceans have
likely been the cause of whale beachings throughout history, by injuring the
animals’ inner ears and sonar organs, frightening and disorienting them, and
causing them to seek refuge in shallow waters. In more recent years, “military
exercises using mid-frequency sonar have been linked quite clearly to the
disorientation and death of beaked whales,” says The Guardian.
Low frequency sonar can be even more
dangerous, the Natural Resource Defense Council asserts. “Some systems operate
at more than 235 decibels,” the NRDC
has said, “producing sound waves that can
travel across tens or even hundreds of miles of ocean. During testing off the
California coast, noise from the Navy’s main low-frequency sonar system was
detected across the breadth of the northern Pacific Ocean.”
The U.S. Navy itself has recognized
the danger that sonar systems represent for marine mammals. As reported in Science magazine: “In a landmark study, the U.S. Navy has concluded that it
killed at least six whales in an accident involving common ship-based sonar.
The finding, announced late last month by the Navy and the U.S. National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS), may complicate Navy plans to field a powerful new
sonar system designed to detect enemy submarines at long distances,” despite
how important that system and its submarine and surface ship counterparts are
for national security.
It has been said the “low-frequency
active sonar” from this system would be the loudest sound ever put into the
seas, The Guardian states. But wind turbines also emit low frequency noise, including
dangerous infrasound. At sea, these vibrations are transmitted via the masts to
the water, and via the pilings to the rock bed. They can travel up to 31 miles
(50 kilometers).
Granted, the acoustic pollution caused
by sonar – particularly powerful navy systems – is greater than that from wind
turbines. But wind turbine noise and infrasound are nearly constant, last as
long as the turbines are in place and come from multiple directions, as in the
areas where the whales were recently stranded.
On land, although the wind industry
continues to deny any culpability, evidence is mounting that low frequency
and particularly infrasound waves emitted by wind turbines have significant
adverse effects on local residents, including sleep deprivation, headaches,
tachycardia (abnormally rapid heart rates) and a dozen other ailments.
Underwater, a milieu where sound waves travel much farther, it would be
irresponsible and unscientific to argue that whales are not affected by operating
wind turbines, all the more because cetaceans use their sonar to “see” what’s
around them
As scientists have pointed out, “It
is likely that acoustic masking by anthropogenic sounds is having an
increasingly prevalent impact on animals’ access to acoustic information that
is essential for communication and other important activities, such as
navigation and prey/predator detection.”
“Blinded” by this masking, whales
and dolphins could seek refuge in shallow waters, away from big ships and
killer whales. There, low tides could surprise them, as large pelagic species
have limited experience with tidal flows.
In September 2012, 19 pilot whales,
a minke whale and a large sei whale beached on the coast of Scotland opposite
an area where air guns were being used by ships surveying the ocean floor, as a
prelude to installing offshore wind farms. “A second pod of 24 pilot whales was
spotted in shallow water by Cellardyke around the same time, but [it] returned
to sea without beaching,” the article noted.
Offshore turbines were also associated
with “many” stillborn baby seals washing
up onshore near the UK’s Scroby Sands wind farm in June 2005. “It’s hard not to
conclude the wind farm is responsible,” the author concluded.
Many more similar deaths may well
have been caused by wind farms at sea. The scientific and environmental
literature abounds in warnings about risks to marine mammals from man-made
noise.
Modern 8-megawatt offshore turbines
are 656 feet (200 meters) above the waves; their rotating blades sweep across a
538-foot (164-meter) diameter. Those enormous blades create powerful pulsating
infrasound and exact a toll on
many species of marine birds, and even on bats that are attracted
to the turbines as far as 9 miles (14 km) offshore.
In a February 2005 letter, the
Massachusetts Audubon Society estimated that the proposed Cape Cod wind project
alone would kill up to 6,600 marine birds each year, including the roseate tern, which is
on the endangered list.
Do we really want to add marine
mammals to the slaughter of birds and bats, by expanding this intermittent,
harmful, enormously expensive and heavily subsidized energy source in marine
habitats?
In addition, having forests of these
enormous turbines off our coasts will greatly increase the risk of collisions
for surface vessels, especially in storms or dense fog, as well as for
submarines. It will also impair radar and sonar detection of hostile ships and
low-flying aircraft, including potential terrorists, and make coastal waters
more dangerous for Coast Guard helicopters and other rescue operations.
The offshore wind industry makes no
sense from an economic, environmental, defense or shipping perspective. To
exempt these enormous installations from endangered species and other laws that
are applied with a heavy hand to all other industries – and even to the U.S.
and Royal Navy – is irresponsible, and even criminal.
Comments
It all
started with “Save the whales !” Then the “environmental movement” was taken
over by the Communists and we went “green”, because solar and wind was the most
expensive way Communists could think of to generate electricity. So, here we are.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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