Details
Phocoena phocoena
The harbor porpoise is a small cetacean of cool coastal waters. Quiet and inconspicuous, it usually travels alone or in small groups while hunting fish.
Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)
It lives in Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic coastal waters and shallow offshore areas. Bays, straits, and continental shelves with abundant prey are important.
Length 140-190 cm; weight 45-76 kg. It has a blunt head with no obvious beak and a small triangular dorsal fin. The back is dark grey and the underside pale.
Cathemeral and often solitary, it surfaces briefly and dives with little splash. It rarely performs the high leaps associated with many dolphins.
A carnivore, it eats small schooling fish, squid, and bottom fishes. Echolocation guides repeated short dives in shallow seas.
Females bear a single calf and nurse it in coastal waters. Calves follow mothers while learning to dive and forage.
It is listed as Least Concern, but bycatch in gillnets is a serious local threat. Coastal noise and pollution can also affect populations.
