The Harbour Porpoise
Dolphins and Porpoises
The Harbour Porpoise, or Phocoena phocoena weighs between 54 to 65
kilograms and is 1.4 to 1.8 meters in length. They have 19 to 28 pairs of small,
spade-shaped teeth in each jaw. Harbours are dark gray with paler gray patches on their
flanks and white on their bellies. They have gray lines from their flippers to their
jawline. Harbour Porpoises have a small, rotund body with a small head, that has no
forehead or beak, they have short slightly rounded flippers and a low triangular dorsal
fin that has a concaved trailing edge. They rarely breach clear of the water. Harbour
Porpoises can be found mainly in coastal waters and subarctic waters of
the North Atlantic, mainly from South Carolina north to central west Greenland, with the
Gulf of St. Lawrence in the west and southwestern Ireland north to the coast if northern Norway
and Murmansk in the east. They are now seen occasionally along the Iberian/French coasts, the
Mediterranean and Baltic, and the North Pacific, mainly from the Sea of Japan north to the Kamchatka peninsula in west and from
Point Conception, California, north to the Gulf of Alaska in east. There is an isolated
population in the Black Sea and southern Sea of Azov. Their population size is unknown, but
recently there has been a note that the population is on the decline in southern
parts of North Atlantic range.
Andrea Vanessa & Erica @ the Advanced Technologies Academy