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Porpoise jumping out of the water: only a few hundred animals left
Photo: Chrys Mellor / picture alliance / dpa
The Baltic Sea porpoise should be better protected in the future. Animal protection organizations said it had been included in the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). This means that emergency rescue measures must be taken. The decision was made at a CMS meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
The organizations said the common harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) is threatened with extinction in the central Baltic Sea and off the Iberian Peninsula. The population in the central Baltic Sea therefore only comprises a few hundred animals.
Often as bycatch
The organizations called for barriers to the animals' seasonal migration to be removed or at least mitigated. Other threats also need to be better controlled. These include underwater noise, environmental pollution and fishing in which porpoises end up as bycatch.
The common porpoise is one of the smallest species within the family of whales, dolphins and porpoises. The genetically independent subpopulation in the central Baltic Sea is also classified as threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The animals also occur in the coastal waters of the North Atlantic, for example off northwest Africa and North America, in the Black Sea and in American and Asian coastal waters in the North Pacific.
The international conference on the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Species in Samarkand continues until Saturday. Government representatives, scientists and conservationists discuss challenges for nature conservation with regard to migratory birds and migratory land and marine animals.
msk/dpa