Over the last few months, roughly two dozen whale corpses have washed up on the Atlantic Coast of the United States. The unexplained increase in fatalities is happening as the state of New Jersey is constructing a massive offshore wind farm, which some conservationists claim is affecting whale navigation.

Federal scientists insist that no evidence has directly linked the construction to the spike in beached whales, but some local lawmakers, environmentalist groups, and conservative commentators have insisted the wind turbines are the obvious culprit and are demanding action.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tracked 184 “unusual mortality events” for Humpback whales in the area since 2016 — roughly 25 per year, but over the past few months, there have been at least 22 large whales stranded in the region, including 15 humpbacks, rivaling last year’s annual total.

“It’s an alarming surge,” said Sheila Dean, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in New Jersey.

Roughly a third of the corpses have washed up on the shores of New York and New Jersey — that’s significant because a massive wind farm is being constructed off New Jersey’s coast. The state has committed $10 billion to the project, which they hope will generate 11 Gigawatts of power by 2040. But now, there’s a growing effort to stop the project.

Thousands of protesters gathered on Sunday — “international whale day” — at Pleasant Point Beach in New Jersey to lobby for a moratorium on offshore wind developments. The group spearheading the effort, Clean Ocean Action, was initially supportive of smaller wind projects, but has expressed concerns over the impact larger developments could have.

“At this point, there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales,” according to the official website of the NOAA, “and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys. We will continue to gather data to help us determine the cause of death for these mortality events.”

While investigations have not connected the construction of the wind farm to the excess fatalities, some employees of the NOAA had raised concerns about the risks it may pose before the surge began.

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Sean Hayes, chief of the protected species branch at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, warned regulators last year that “additional noise, vessel traffic and habitat modifications due to offshore wind development will likely cause added stress [to whales and] result in additional population consequences.”

Whales and other cetaceans often rely on echolocation, a sort of natural sonar, to sense their surroundings, and excess noise could distort their perceptions and lead them into dangerous waters.

Advocates of the turbines have argued that the ships involved only account for 2% of the total traffic in the area — the port of New York and New Jersey is the third busiest in the United States — and whatever minor marine disruptions that are created would be offset by a decline in greenhouse emissions.

30 mayors of coastal communities in the area, and several sitting members of Congress, including Chris Smith (R-NJ), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have called for a moratorium on the project. Tucker Carlson of Fox News also highlighted the issue to a national audience.

The office of Governor Phil Murphy put out a statement in response to the public outcry, expressing sympathy for concerned environmentalists while insinuating that some critics were not concerned with whales at all and were merely capitalizing on the situation to shut down a project they had already opposed.

“We know that many residents, both in our shore communities and across the state, share our genuine concern for marine life and its survival,” the statement said. “But we also know that there are those out there who are motivated not by a concern for our environment but by their own political ideologies and opposition to the very efforts that will preserve and protect our environment for generations to come.”

Other observers were even less charitable.

“It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar told USA Today.

Still, while the cause of the surge in stranded whales has not been firmly established, the phenomenon is indisputable.

“I’ve gotten lots of information from different sources,” said Kim Wetzel, 57, an Ocean City resident who attended Sunday’s rally, “and you can’t argue with the fact that 10 whales have washed up.”

A Florida Democrat backed off a proposed bill that would have banned dogs from sticking their heads out of car windows.

Democratic state senator Lauren Book proposed the bill last week. It would outlaw drivers in the state from letting their dogs stick their heads out of the window of their vehicles, among other positions, while driving. But after backlash from the public, Book said that she would scrap the provision from her bill.

The bill states that a person may not “[a]llow a dog to extend its head or any other body part outside a motor vehicle window while the person is operating the motor vehicle on a public roadway.”

The provision was written in the name of safety, but dogs actually enjoy sticking their heads out of the window. According to the website barkavenuedaycamp.com, dogs do it because the wind carries a vast array of smells into their nose all at once. On top of that, dogs have a wider scope of vision than humans; even though they are more near-sighted, they are better at seeing moving objects, and can more clearly see the objects and the landscape as they pass by. Together, the sights, smells, and sounds create a sensory overload that is enjoyable to them.

But the delightful sight and smell smorgasbord is not without risks. “Although most dogs love to stick their heads out open windows, the wind can seriously irritate mucous membranes and blow pieces of grit or other debris into their eyes,” the Humane Society told Fox News. “Pets could also be seriously injured by objects as you drive down the road.”

But Book barked up the wrong tree, and found herself in the doghouse with her constituents. She was forced to walk the provision back. “Our family has three dogs—two of which are almost 175 pounds each and love sticking their heads out the window—so I welcome and appreciate all public comment on this issue, which is only one piece of a complete proposed overhaul of the state’s animal welfare system as brought to me by veterinarians and advocates,” Book said in a statement, via WFLA. “We can easily amend this piece out of the bill while protecting the intent of the animal welfare community and vets who proposed the policy because of unintended injuries they’ve treated — and we will. In the meantime, let’s all invest in a good pair of ‘doggles’ to keep our furry friends safe.”

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Besides prohibiting dogs from sticking their heads out of windows, the bill also bans drivers from:

holding dogs in their laps or allowing a dog “to be in such a position as to interfere with the person’s control over the driving mechanism of a motor vehicle while the person is operating the motor vehicle on a public roadway”; letting their dogs ride in front of them on motorcycles; transporting dogs on the side or the top, in the trunk, or in a closed cargo space of a motor vehicle, or; transporting a dog on a trailer being towed by a motor vehicle

Violators can be charged with a moving violation.