The Mystic Aquarium marine rescue team arrived at Little Compton's Briggs Beach on July 10th when the young female minke was still alive. After her death, the team carved out a few inches here and there for DNA and pathogen testing. But they did not conduct an inner ear dissection and extraction, which might have provided evidence of hearing damage.

There were signs of a previous months-old line entanglement, but she was not entangled when she came to shore. Rescue Manager Sarah Callan twice told a by-stander that entanglement was not the cause of the stranding. There were no signs of blunt force trauma, no visible signs of cause of death. But here was a juvenile minke dying, now dead, on the beach. 

Components of the inner ear decompose rapidly after death. An ear dissection and extraction on a whale must be done within about nine hours of its death, otherwise, there's not much left intact to test fully. Yet the Mystic rescue team did not perform a dissection and extraction, saying they didn't have the proper saw for the job. Instead, they said they'd return the next day to do the necropsy. The next day did not meet the nine-hour window; therefore, test results will be inconclusive.

What kind of marine rescue team arrives at a whale stranding without the tools needed for an inner ear dissection and extraction? Especially here on the East Coast where offshore wind (OSW) construction is going on fast and furiously with a cacophony of related noise, including pile driving, seismic seabed blasting, and the constant roar of OSW vessel dual positioning thrusters. And on a beach not far away from where Ørsted is pile driving wind turbine foundations into the seabed.

Why would the Mystic Aquarium not want to know the results of a properly executed inner ear dissection on a perfect candidate, a freshly deceased large juvenile whale?

Mystic Aquarium has accepted millions of dollars from Ørsted, Avangrid, Revolution Wind, Eversource, and Dominion Energy. (Mystic Aquarium Annual Report 2022; Conflicts of interest: environmental organizations take offshore wind money, Save Right Whale Coalition, 26 April 2022.) The State Policy Director of Dominion Energy (the company that is constructing the massive wind facility off Virginia Beach) was on Mystic Aquarium's Board of Trustees from 2017-2024.

OSW companies have given millions to numerous NGOs who run marine animal rescue operations along our coast. The deal, it seems, is to make sure there is never any evidence to directly link the unprecedented surge of whale and dolphin strandings in New England and the mid-Atlantic to OSW construction activity. 

“There is no information supporting that any of the equipment used in support of OSW development could lead directly to the death of a whale,” Benjamin Laws of NOAA Fisheries told reporters in January 2023. Since then, almost 100 large whales and several hundred dolphins and porpoises have stranded on the East Coast—many clearly not entangled or exhibiting external injuries.

Betting 10 to one on a parasite or virus being announced as cause of death. Any takers?

Constance Gee

Westport