AUS - How a false claim about wind turbines killing whales is spinning out of control in coastal Australia

Some pictures show a whale lifeless on a beach. In others, the whale is on fire, jumping from the ocean, as wind turbines loom behind it. The pictures are shocking – intentionally so. Recently they’ve appeared on posters and placards and in social media posts in New South Wales’ Hunter and Illawarra regions, as part of a growing campaign against an Albanese government plan to open offshore windfarms zones off the coast.

For weeks, an image of a beached whale with turbines in the background has appeared on a roadside billboard in Port Stephens, north of Newcastle, under the words “Stop Port Stephens Offshore Wind Farms”. After questions from Guardian Australia this week, the advertising company oOh!media added a note to the billboard saying it had been authorised by Troy Radford, the president of the Newcastle and Port Stephens Game Fish Club.

Asked about the ad, Radford said it had been paid for by members of the fishing community and acknowledged “we had someone design it for us”. “It needed to be high impact and visual, and that sums up the information that we’ve got at the time on the potential whale deaths,” he said.

But scientists are clear: the suggestion wind turbines kill whales is not backed by credible evidence.

Quentin Hanich, the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Marine Policy and professorial fellow at the University of Wollongong, spent this week debunking a fake article shared on social media that purported to be from his publication which claimed offshore wind projects in the Illawarra and Hunter would kill 400 whales a year.

The Facebook group took that post down but he worries about the nonexistent study’s broader impact.

“There’s been a whole bunch of continuing dialogue that suggests that windfarms kill whales without any actual evidence to demonstrate that that’s the case,” Hanich said.

This is part of the backdrop to the campaign opposing offshore windfarms in NSW, which has developed momentum in recent weeks, backed by locals, fishers, tourism operators, surfers and MPs from outside the region opposed to renewable energy development.

It has risen despite support from industry, unions, local MPs and councillors, the university and environment groups. Greenpeace and the Australian Conservation Foundation have stepped in seeking to counter concerns about whales.

Observers say it can be seen as part of the broader challenge to developments meant to move Australia from relying mostly on coal power to running nearly entirely on renewable energy. It is not what the government expected when the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, last year outlined proposals for six offshore wind zones across the country, arguing Australia had “world-class offshore wind energy potential” and that “just one rotation of one offshore wind turbine provides as much energy as an average rooftop solar installation generates in one day”.

Arthur Rorris, the secretary of the South Coast Labour Council and a supporter of offshore wind developments, said there were grounds for people who support a rapid transition to clean energy to be concerned. “The Illawarra has been a sounding board for how to divide and turn communities against windfarms in Australia, and it has shown these strategies have worked.

“We will soon see this playing out across the country,” he said.

An opposition fanned by the Coalition

A consultation period for the first zone off Gippsland in Victoria was declared with relatively little controversy. The situation has been different in the Hunter, where a 1,800km2 offshore wind zone that starts about 20km from the coast was declared in July, and the Illawarra, where a consultation period ends next week.

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