Assembly Democrats Hold Hearing on Sea Mammal Fatalities

TRENTON – It was the Democrats’ turn to hold a hearing, May 18, on the sea mammal fatalities that have inundated the New Jersey shoreline since early December 2022. 
While it was technically a hearing of the state Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and not an independent partisan gathering, the hearing was called by the Democratic leadership of the committee, applauded by those nonprofit and environmental groups who support the offshore wind initiative and decried as partisan and one-sided by Republican legislators like state Sen. Anthony Bucco (R-25th).
The hearing was a response to Republican efforts to halt offshore wind activities by building public support for such an action by asserting a potential link between sea mammal fatalities and preconstruction offshore wind activities. 
Bucco held a virtual independent hearing May 3, along with three other Republican state senators and a series of witnesses who supported the call for stopping work on offshore wind.
Neither hearing presented witnesses with opposing views. 
The thrust of the May 18 hearing, which allowed remote access through audio only, stressed the lack of evidence that the spate of sea mammal strandings are linked to offshore wind work.
Mendy Garron, a marine mammal emergency response coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said since Dec. 1, 2022, there have been 39 large whale fatalities along the Atlantic coast, nine of which were in New Jersey. 
She added that 242 small cetaceans, such as dolphins and porpoises, have washed ashore in the same time period, 31 of them in New Jersey.
Danielle Brown, a researcher with the nonprofit Gotham Whale, pointed to a significant rise in the population of large whales, which she said means there will be more overlap with human activities. The increase in strandings, she said, is happening and will continue “regardless of what industry operates off the coast.”
One witness at the hearing was state Department of Environmental (DEP) Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, who argued that climate change is producing warmer ocean waters which, in turn, are altering the location of sea mammal food supplies leading whales to areas where collisions are more likely. 
LaTourette also asserted that the environmental destruction caused by climate change is the greater threat to marine life, making efforts to reduce the trend of rising temperatures through the use of clean energy a major benefit for sea mammals.
Part of the public frustration with the sea mammal fatalities has been the desire for quicker news on causes. 
Sheila Dean, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, called for patience. She and Brown explained the intensive effort that goes into a sea mammal necropsy and the nature of the laboratory work that must follow to gain definitive answers. 
Brown pointed to the overload of tests facing the few laboratories that do this type of work. Dean said there may still be months before results are available.
The sea mammal fatalities have been the battlefield upon which the larger struggle to advance or stop the construction of offshore wind farms is being fought. 
The Republican hearing May 3 frequently strayed in more expansive objections to offshore wind, ranging from the offshore wind initiative’s potential harm to the coastal tourism economy to straight out objections to visible turbines from shoreline beaches.
The same was true May 18 when those arguing that there is no evidence tying sea mammal deaths to offshore wind work also lost the strict focus on sea mammal fatalities. 
Witnesses like LaTourette moved quickly to the existential threat of climate change and the greater harm presented by the warming earth.
One side asks for time to gain definitive answers and the other argues that the move to alternative clean energy production needs to accelerate.
Bucco called the May 18 hearing “one-sided,” arguing that it “stacked the deck in favor of protecting wind farms over whales.”  
The citizen group Save LBI, whose President Michael Dean was a witness at the Republican hearing May 3, issued a statement saying that the May 18 Democratic-led hearing “ignored key facts and basic science related to the recent spate of whale and dolphin deaths off NJ’s coast and the realities of offshore wind industrialization.”
Other groups, like the New Jersey Wind Works Coalition, applauded the hearing, calling it “fact-based.” 
The organization’s press release stated, “Time and again scientists have stated that the unusual mortality event of marine mammals – which began well before wind energy development – is unrelated” to the offshore wind initiative.
Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said, “Offshore wind is one of the best tools to combat climate change, which is the true culprit for a changing ocean.”
The ability of the May 18 hearing to change minds is unclear. The flood of comments following the hearing show support from those who have demonstrated a commitment to offshore wind prior to the hearing and criticism from groups previously opposed to offshore wind development.
The death of sea mammals, whether linked or not linked to offshore wind, is the visible battle in a much larger struggle. 
Contact the author, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.