NOAA Gets Increased Money For Whale Monitoring, Protection Off NJ

JERSEY SHORE — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has now received $82 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to pay for increased whale monitoring and boat strike surveillance along the Jersey Shore.

However, just last Thursday Gov. Phil Murphy and the Democratic governors of five other Northeastern states sent this letter to President Joe Biden, telling him all offshore wind development off the East Coast is at risk of entirely collapsing if the federal government does not give even more tax breaks to offshore wind companies.

In that same letter, the six Democratic governors also said there will be "significant new costs for ratepayers" for offshore wind if the federal government does not intervene.

"Without federal action, offshore wind deployment in the U.S. is at serious risk of stalling because states’ ratepayers may be unable to absorb these significant new costs alone," wrote the six Democratic governors in the Sept. 13 letter to Biden.

Already this summer, Orsted, the Danish wind company planning to build turbines off Atlantic City, said they would entirely walk away from the project if they were not given tax breaks from New Jersey, which Murphy gave them.

Orsted has started sonar mapping of the ocean floor, but has not yet started to build the turbines and now says it won't make a final decision to build them until the beginning of 2024.

Biden has a goal of producing 30 gigawatts of U.S. offshore wind power by 2030, and Murphy wants to move New Jersey to using entirely clean energy by 2035.

The governors who sent the letter were the governors of New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland and Massachusetts. They wrote:

"Unfortunately, inflationary pressures, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the lingering supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have created extraordinary economic challenges that threaten to reverse these offshore wind gains. Instead of continued price declines, offshore wind faces cost increases in orders of magnitude that threaten states’ ability to make purchasing decisions. These pressures are affecting not only procurements of new offshore wind1 but, critically, previously procured projects already in the pipeline. Absent intervention, these near-term projects are increasingly at risk of failing."

In that letter, the Democratic governors are also asking Biden for a revenue sharing arrangement, where any profit from offshore wind is shared between those six states instead of being returned to the U.S. Treasury. And they made a third request for the federal government to approve offshore wind permitting faster.

Republican lawmakers are calling for an entire halt to offshore wind development, and for a federal investigation into what is causing the increase in whale deaths.

Pallone says climate change is drawing whales' prey closer to shore, thus leading to boat strikes

No evidence has been found by the federal government that links sonar mapping to the increase in whale deaths off the Jersey Shore.

In 2023, Central Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone successfully petitioned NOAA to be given $17.2 million for passive acoustic monitoring of whales and other marine life along the U.S. East Coast.

Pallone says that climate change and boats going too fast — not sonar mapping for turbines — is causing the increase in whale deaths off New York and New Jersey.

"Climate change is the biggest threat to marine mammals," said Pallone on Sept. 18. "A rise in ocean temperature is leading marine mammals’ prey farther north and closer to shore, forcing whales to move to areas of significant shipping activity. Since 2008, large vessels have been required to travel at speeds to protect whales, but compliance remains problematic. According to NOAA, vessel strikes and entanglements have caused more than 77 percent of deaths and injuries of the endangered North Atlantic right whale since 2017."

Additional federal funding will go to:

• Vessel Strike Risk Reduction: $20.1 million will be invested in vessel strike risk reduction efforts, including $16.7 million for whale detection and avoidance technology development.
• On-Demand Fishing Gear: $17.9 million to support furthering on-demand fishing gear technology.
• Enforcement Efforts: $5 million will be invested to further support enforcement efforts, including new equipment, such as Doppler units, radar plotting aids, and marine monitor shore based units, in addition to contracts for operations.

Pallone, who represents Woodbridge down to Long Branch, said he started asking this spring for more federal money to protect whales. In April, Pallone sent this letter with other NJ Democratic congress reps to the Biden Administration "to demand real solutions in response to the death of marine mammals off New Jersey’s coast."

"The members of Congress asked the Biden administration to do more to address vessel strikes and emphasized that climate change poses a significant threat to marine mammals," said Pallone. "They requested information from NOAA on what the agency is doing to enforce vessel speed, limit entanglements, and reduce microplastic pollution that marine mammals swallow when feeding."

“Today’s announcement is important news for our efforts to protect marine mammals," said the Congressman. "With this funding, NOAA is getting closer to deploying new technology to track whales with greater accuracy so that we can reduce vessel strikes and entanglements, which we know are the leading causes of whale deaths and injuries."