The months of June and July are the breeding period for porpoises. If a porpoise is just born, he can actually do very little, but must immediately swim and breathe himself. To survive, the calf must swim in the stream of the mother to get ahead. But that doesn’t always go well.
“Something small only has to happen and the calf loses his mother,” explains Annemarie. That is why the breeding period is also a time when relatively more dead calves are found on the beach. “The life of a porpoise is tough.”
The fact that it has blown hard in recent days did not help for the young animals. “The wind may have ensured that his mother’s calf became removed. That can be fatal.”
Do you find a porpoise calf?
What if you encounter a washed -up porpoise calf yourself? “Report immediately to SOS Dolfijn or at Waarneming.nl,” says Annemarie. If the animal is ‘fresh’, just dead, it can then be brought to Utrecht University for research.
If the beast is still alive, don’t throw it back into the sea, Annemarie emphasizes. “He is not just on the side. Call us, because maybe he has lost sick or his mother.”