An endangered North Atlantic right whale breaches off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in March 2024.Stan Grossfeld/Boston Globe via Getty Images

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed offshore wind farms for whale deaths, contrary to scientific evidence. Now the administration is quietly abandoning key research programs meant to protect marine mammals living in an increasingly busy ocean.

The New England Aquarium and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, both in Boston, received word from Interior Department officials last month stating that the department was terminating funds for research to help protect whale populations, effective immediately. The cut halted a 14-year-old whale survey program that the aquarium staff had been carrying out from small airplanes piloted over a swath of ocean where three wind farms—Vineyard Wind 1, Sunrise Wind, and Revolution Wind—are now being built.

Federal officials did not publicly announce the cancellation of funds. In a statement to Canary Media, a spokesperson for the New England Aquarium confirmed the clawback, saying that a letter from Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management dated September 10 had ​“terminated the remaining funds on a multi-year $1,497,453 grant, which totaled $489,068.”

“If you’re into whales…you don’t want windmills,” Trump said moments after signing an order that froze permitting and leasing for offshore wind.

The aquarium is currently hosting the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a network of scientists that study one of the many large whale species that reside in New England’s waters. News of the cut to the aquarium’s research project has dampened the mood there. And rumors have been circulating among attendees about rollbacks to an even larger research program, a public-private partnership led by BOEM that tracks whales near wind farm sites from New England to Virginia.

Government emails obtained by Canary Media indicate that BOEM is indeed shutting down the Partnership for an Offshore Wind Energy Regional Observation Network (POWERON). Launched last year, the program expanded on a $5.8 million effort made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, deploying a network of underwater listening devices along the East Coast ​“to study the potential impacts of offshore wind facility operations on baleen whales,” referring to the large marine mammals that feed on........

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