When a whale dies, it often decomposes quite quickly—the process starts within hours of an animal’s stranding on shore. Depending on the species, they may have six inches or more of blubber, an insulating layer that traps heat inside and turns their internal organs to mush.
That can make Jennifer Bloodgood’s job very difficult. As a wildlife veterinarian with New York state and Cornell Wildlife Health Lab, she’s an expert on conducting whale necropsies, as autopsies on animals are called—and she knows that it’s best to start them quickly, or she could miss key clues about how the gigantic mammal perished.
These investigations have become especially important because whale deaths have become a political flashpoint with significant consequences. There are currently three active mortality events for whales in the Atlantic, meaning clusters of deaths that experts consider unusual. And Republican lawmakers, influential conservative think tanks, and—most notably—President Donald Trump (a longtime enemy of wind power) are making dubious claims about how offshore wind farms are responsible.
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s series “The New Conspiracy Age,” on how the present boom in conspiracy theories is reshaping science and technology.
This has become the basis for a nebulous quasi-conspiracy theory, in which some anti-wind groups have claimed that the surveying technology used to map sites for wind farms can disturb the animals. Another argument is that the noise emitted by operational turbines disrupts whales’ communication and navigation. “The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” President Trump remarked in January.
Over the past year, the supposed threat posed by the turbines has been cited as part of the official justification for Washington’s attack on offshore wind power—a significant part of what was once a growing clean energy infrastructure in the country. The Trump administration has halted leases and permits for new projects, ordered work to stop on a major new wind farm that was nearly complete, and canceled over $600 million in funding for ports to support the industry.
But any finger-pointing at wind turbines for whale deaths ignores the fact that whales have been washing up on beaches since long before the giant machines were rooted in the ocean floor. This is something that has always happened. And the scientific consensus is clear: There’s no evidence that wind farms are the cause of recent increases in whale deaths.
There’s still a lot that researchers don’t know about whales’ lives and deaths, but experts often conduct dozens of in-depth (and somewhat gruesome) investigations each year on the US East Coast alone. And in the active mortality events there, the data shows that humpback whales and North Atlantic right whales are typically casualties of human interaction, falling victim to things like boat strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. (In fact, in Bloodgood’s experience, about half the humpback whales that are in good enough condition to necropsy show signs of a vessel strike or other human interaction.) And minke whales appear to be falling to a common infection called brucella, which she’s also observed.
“When a whale strands, there’s a huge effort that goes into responding and figuring out why it died,” Bloodgood says. “Many people’s job is to go out and figure out what’s happening.”
And, notably, what they’re finding is not death by turbine. “There is currently no evidence,” she tells me, “that wind energy is influencing whale strandings.”
Bloodgood is largely clinical as she talks about her work, describing the sometimes gory work of necropsies with a straight face from her simply decorated office—though on several occasions she chuckles and apologizes after sharing a particularly graphic detail.
“We can learn so much from dead animals,” she tells me. By investigating bodies that wash up on shore, she and her fellow experts can uncover basic details like their species and age, but also what they ate, and, of course, why they died. They may look for signs of disease, or for evidence of human interference—boats, fishing nets, and yes, wind farm development.
The first step after someone spots a whale washed up on shore is to call local authorities and groups of scientists, veterinarians, and volunteers, called stranding networks, that can help rescue, rehabilitate, and release the ones that are still alive—or perform necropsies on the ones that aren’t.
Over the past few years, Bloodgood has helped with nine strandings across New Jersey, New York, and Delaware. (As a professor, she often brings students along. She’s had to introduce a lottery system since so many are interested.)
How any necropsy unfolds depends on the condition of the whale and on its stranding location. But generally, if there’s a fresh enough body to justify a full necropsy, a large team will get together on the scene. They’ll start with an external exam, looking for anything unusual on the skin, eyes, blowhole, and mouth. Then they’ll systematically dismantle the whale, noting anything that seems abnormal, and taking samples to send back to the lab.
When the researchers are evaluating a cause of death, they’re looking at the whole picture, trying to find the most likely cause and gather evidence to discount all other potential causes. There’s not always a smoking gun, Bloodgood says. But a thorough enough examination can usually yield some meaningful clues.
Say, for instance, a whale’s suspected cause of death is a boat strike. Researchers will look out for bruises and cuts during the external examination, and then they’ll try to spot broken bones and internal hemorrhaging. But they’ll also keep their eyes out for other issues, like lesions that can signal brucellosis.
Usually, you want experienced cutters to do the carving, Bloodgood says, since whales are so large it’s usually necessary to use knives that are one or two feet long. Whales are also oily, so the knives can get quite slippery.
After cutting through the thick blubber layer, researchers may use gaff hooks to spear skin or organs in order to move them around or keep them out of the way. There’s no rigid order of operations, though they’ll typically look at the major organs including lungs, liver, kidneys, and brain; it’s also usually helpful to open up the digestive system to see what the whale has been eating, which Bloodgood says increasingly includes plastic.
Accessing all the necessary organs can require moving the whale. Sometimes, if a stranding location is accessible enough, heavy equipment like an excavator can help lift part of the body to assist in splitting it open.
When that’s not the case, experts can use what’s called the window method, Bloodgood says. That basically just means cutting strategically placed holes along the body to access the desired organs. Near the pectoral fin is generally a good target for a sample of the lung, for example. One problem with this method is that it doesn’t always work if the body has decomposed and been tossed around in the waves before washing onshore. In that case, things get all jumbled up, and the lungs could end up by the tail, for instance.
After the deconstructing is done, Bloodgood goes back to the lab, taking samples of each of the tissues to conduct further analysis. One area of interest for her is ear bones. If a whale were in fact affected by the sound waves used by boats surveying wind farm locations (something that’s unlikely, given the type of sound waves used), their ear bones might show evidence of trauma associated with noise. That damage could be visible under a microscope or in a CT scan.
Bloodgood has been investigating this theory, with a particular focus on dolphins—their heads, unlike whales’, are small enough to fit in the scanner. There’s been no sign of such damage in any of the samples she’s examined.
Despite all the things that experts like Bloodgood can observe and test for, the system can never be perfect. Not all dead whales end up on beaches, and not all that do are in good enough shape for a thorough investigation. What’s more, it turns out to be quite difficult to entirely disprove that any single cause contributed to a whale’s death. Even if a stranded animal had an infection, or was hit by a boat, it’s theoretically possible there was another factor as well.
Still, in many cases, the necropsy turns up enough for scientists to feel confident assigning a cause of death. And after an investigation is complete, they publish a report, which is then analyzed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Enough such reports can point to trends.
But most people almost certainly don’t see those reports or seek out that data. Even as whale deaths have become a heated point of debate at the highest levels of politics, Bloodgood feels the public doesn’t always recognize the care researchers take to investigate what’s going on. “I think a lot of people don’t realize the amount of effort that goes into understanding why whales die,” she says.
She notes that these experts are working with limited, and dwindling, public support and resources. The Trump administration recently canceled funding for two programs that used aerial surveys and underwater listening devices to track whale populations and better understand the effects of human activity—including offshore wind development.
At the same time, there’s more pressure, and more misinformation out there, she adds: “I think it’s just become increasingly important to be transparent with the public.” In addition to publishing reports from necropsies online, some stranding networks give updates to local communities on social media, too.
“If you don’t tell people what you find, they start coming up with their own ideas,” Bloodgood says. “If they think you’re hiding something, that’s the worst.”
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