COURT HOUSE – Following several months in which a spate of sea mammal strandings animated the debate over offshore wind in Cape May County, July was a quiet month in terms of reports of carcasses on New Jersey beaches.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center is reporting only one bottlenose dolphin carcass floating dead in the waters of Barnegat Bay July 17. The carcass never washed ashore and was too badly decomposed to provide any other information.
An unusual spike in marine mammal deaths since December 2022 expanded and energized the public debate on the wisdom of the state’s offshore wind initiative.
