To the Editor:
I lived on Martha’s Vineyard for 25 years — raised a family there. I sat on many governing boards and created a charitable foundation exclusively for Islanders in need, called the Second Chance Foundation. And in all that time, I don’t remember one incident of a right whale washing up on our Vineyard beaches. Not one. Now I’ve read that four right whales have washed up on the Island in the past seven years. And, since 2020, wind farms and turbines started being erected just off the Vineyard shoreline, with George’s Bank’s vast ecosystem as their anchorage. Correlation? Connection? There are a lot of smart people who don’t think so — and then, there are a lot of smart people who would argue otherwise.
The most recently discovered dead whale to float ashore was given the catalog name No. 5120, which was a curious toe tag considering there are only an estimated 364 individuals left of her breed — the great American right whale. This genus of whales is on the brink of extinction — yet again.
The carcass was that of a young right whale, a 3-year-old female entangled in rope, or ropes. She was the latest eco-flotsam to wash up on a Vineyard beach — the fourth right whale in the past seven years. Something didn’t seem right about this story.
By all outward appearance, this poor creature got her tail tangled in a fisherman’s rope, and slowly died over many, many, months of struggle. However, No. 5120 was also lassoed around her tail with a large drag rope during the inspection process, and that rope remained attached, throughout her dismemberment by NOAA officials and researchers. So why wasn’t she just hauled back out to sea, like all the others?
Throughout this operation, an elephant remained in the room — and still does. Was the fisherman’s rope the sole cause of death? Fishermen and their ropes have been around for almost as long as right whales themselves. Why now? Why are so many right whales washing up dead in recent years? They reported that it would take up to two months of government funding before determining the cause of death.
There was little mention of anything remotely close to the controversy of wind farms or the underlying suspicion that wind turbines directly impact the right whale’s potential extinction. Interesting. The species itself was brought back from oblivion 100 years ago — barely. The Russians then nearly again completed the task of extinction in the 1960s. By recent headcount, however, the right whale herd has managed to work its way back to a razor-thin number of 364 — minus No. 5120.
The right whale has so much history in American waters. It was called the right whale because when it was killed and harvested by whalers, the right whale would always float on the surface, instead of sinking to the bottom. It was the “right whale.” That’s why these Cow Bay Beach “investigators” scrambled around the carcass like hornets on an intruder. They are scared to death that there’s a provable correlation between the dead whale and the wind farm. That’s why they didn’t drag No. 5120 back out to sea like they’ve always done with other right whales in the past seven years.
Ironically, the right whale’s characteristic of floating after death could save the species from extinction by the mere fact that dead right whales will inevitably keep returning by washing up onshore. The telltale right whale floating on the surface could also render a fatal blow to wind farms if they prove culpable should the right whale wash up, instead of other species of whales that otherwise sink to the bottom of George’s Bank when they die, without a trace.
As I write this, I will guarantee you one thing from years of documenting related issues — just one death, any death, of a right whale proven to be a direct result of wind farms or a wind turbine will shut turbine wind operations down on the entire East Coast. Guaranteed. Just one irrefutable incident, and the wind venture is over.
This is not something to hope for. Just a cause-and-effect reality. The right whale could follow the recently extinct passenger pigeon, the ivory-billed woodpecker, or the Western black rhino. Everyone involved knows this. So, one verifiable death of a right whale at the hands of wind farm turbines is all it would take to shut the whole operation down. And even then, there’s no assurance the right whale will stay afloat above the waters of extinction.
It’s a tangled web, to be sure.
Victor R. Pisano
Savannah, Ga.
