Hundreds of unexplained whale deaths might be linked to offshore wind farms 

Perhaps a bigger mystery even than the unexplained deaths of up to 100 whales washed up on Scottish and Irish beaches during the past few months, is the fact that much of the media has been strangely quiet over the matter.

It’s thought that very many more of the mammals might have perished at sea, meaning that several hundred whales might have died. While there is, with some justification, an overload of publicity about plastics in our seas causing harm to wildlife, there have been few reports highlighting the shocking numbers of whale deaths that appear to be due not to plastic but more likely to sound pollution at sea which affects the delicate sonar that the whales use to navigate and communicate.

Military Sonar And Oil Exploration Blamed….

Fingers have been pointed at military manoeuvres in the waters of the North Atlantic as well as deep sea oil and gas exploration.

But what many of those pointing the fingers seem to ignore entirely is that there are now vast banks of huge wind turbines around the Scottish coast, throughout the North Sea and in the Irish Sea which emit low level noise capable of disorientating the sensitive marine mammals.

While it is important to consider all explanations for the whale deaths, it seems suspicious to me that the notion of wind farms contributing to the huge number of beached whales is no longer even mooted as a possibility. Yet, to many, the correlation between wind farms and whale deaths is substantial. Unusual whale mortality has also been reported from the East coast of the USA and Denmark, both areas in which there happen to be offshore turbines.

As recently as last year the idea was put forward that wind farms might play a part in the demise of the mammals when some dead Minke whales were washed up in Norfolk, UK, close to an offshore wind farm.

Suggestions That Wind Farms To Blame Dismissed Out Of Hand….

But suggestions that noise from the turbines was to blame were hastily dismissed as paranoia and ridiculed by wind industry sympathisers. What was an apparently plausible link is now ignored – and those implicating turbines with the whale deaths are mocked and treated with contempt.

Perhaps there is too much money at stake, invested in the wind industry, to risk considering the possibility that the vast industrial scale turbines are a contributory factor to the whale deaths.

Environmentalists Critical Of Wind Energy….

While genuine environmentalists remain highly critical of the wind industry and its motives, perhaps the faux greens are too blinkered to see the harm they might be doing, heaven forbid that anyone should threaten their fantasy of a planet powered by wind and inhabited by Unicorns.

But to me there is at least a possible link between the proliferation of offshore turbines and the increase in whale deaths. It’s logical, no?

Or are we just going to bury our heads in the sands of ignorance and allow the demise of our precious whales (and birds and bats…) while we listen, in blissful stupidity, to the whirring of turbine blades…?