Porpoises are protected mammals, for that reason the government has a duty to fit well on these whales. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature therefore lets the Wageningen Marine Research research. It is getting busier on the North Sea and through the sender of porpoises, there must be a picture of their movements in the habitat. The researchers announced today that it went wrong last week at the Marsdiep.
The employees of SOS Dolphin call themselves porpoise lovers and find every porpoise that dies terrible. “There was apparently so much stress there. One drowns in the nets, that seems to me to be a terrible death for such an animal. A second must be released because of all the stress. I find this very worrying,” says Annemarie van den Berg of SOS Dolfijn in Anna Paulowna. She hopes that the stop on the investigation will become final.
Rather porpoise dead
Last May, two porpoises were already caught in the Oosterschelde. That was a precursor of the investigation that was now being carried out. A porpoise was also found dead after two weeks.
According to Van den Berg, the animal was already very bad at the time. Researchers from the Veterinary Medicine department of Utrecht University could therefore not draw conclusions. “But the animal has been swimming around there for nine years. It can always be a coincidence, but you don’t have to exclude anything. The channel of a second porpoise fell out after a short time. Add this now and then I think the price is really too high,” says Van den Berg.
Her colleague Sanne Hessing adds: “And the question is whether with this type of research you get the answers you want.” At the foundation she is involved in (channel) research at porpoises. “If you want a picture of their world, you will have to sender many more animals: young animals and older animals, porpoises that are close to the coast and far at sea.”
Text continues under photo.