Then on Jan. 30, 2023, Luna washed up dead on Long Island, New York.

He was the tenth whale to strand on beaches in New York and New Jersey in nine weeks. Environmentalists, politicians and ordinary citizens loudly wondered if the construction of offshore wind turbines was killing them.

Apostolos Gerasoulis, a Rutgers professor emeritus of computer science who co-created the search engine that powers Ask.com, now says the answer is yes.

'Absolutely, 100 percent, offshore wind kills whales,' he says.

Early in 2023, Gerasoulis began researching whale deaths. That summer he started building a software system to identify any relationship between the dead whales and offshore wind survey vessels, which use loud blasts of sonar to map the seabed for the installation of offshore wind turbines and high-voltage cables.

He named the system Luna.

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is responsible for protecting marine animals and their habitats insists there is no connection.

'To date, no whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activities,' said Lauren Gaches, NOAA Fisheries public affairs director shortly after Luna's body was found.

Whale deaths had started increasing several years earlier. NOAA declared 'unusual mortality events' for humpback whales in 2016, minke whales in 2017, and North Atlantic right whales also in 2017.

The death count is now up to 534 for these species.

Wind farm developers started sending out sonar vessels to blast the ocean floor with high-intensity sound waves to map it for offshore wind farms in 2016.

But NOAA still denies any connection.

'At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys or pile driving could potentially cause whale deaths,' Katie Wagner, NOAA public affairs specialist, told DailyMail.com.