OCEAN CITY – As requests for a moratorium on offshore wind continue to grow, a scientific commission joined two federal agencies last week in disputing any link between offshore wind development and the slew of whale deaths occurring along the East Coast.
Last week, the Marine Mammal Commission became the third agency to reject a link between recent whale deaths and offshore wind energy activities. While there have been 16 reported humpback whale strandings along the Atlantic coastline this winter, the agency argued those deaths are not a new occurrence.
“Despite several reports in the media, there is no evidence to link these strandings to offshore wind energy development,” a statement reads.
The commission’s statement comes weeks after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) reported having no evidence connecting recent whale deaths to offshore wind activity. However, federal lawmakers in Maryland and other East Coast states are calling for a moratorium on offshore wind energy development until the cause of those deaths can be determined.
“While NOAA insists that they have no scientific evidence pointing to offshore wind energy projects as the proximate cause of death, they can offer no scientific evidence that these projects are not contributory causes of death,” U.S. Congressman Andy Harris (R-Md.) wrote in a recent letter. “I am renewing my call for a windmill project moratorium until it can be definitively proven that windmill projects are not contributing to the repeated whale deaths we are now witnessing on almost a weekly basis.”
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