Harbor Porpoise

Harbor Porpoise 

(Phocoena phocoena), an aquatic mammal of the subfamily Delphininae. The body measures up to 1.8 m long and weighs up to 80 kg. The back and fins are dark, the belly white, and the sides gray. The harbor porpoise lives in the coastal waters of the North Atlantic and the northern Pacific. Three subspecies are found in the USSR: the Black Sea form, P. p. relicta (the smallest); the Atlantic form, P. p. phocoena (White, Barents, and Baltic seas); and the Pacific form, P. p. vormerina.

Harbor porpoises live in small groups. They feed mainly on schooling fishes; in the Far East they also feed on cephalopod mollusks. The calves are about 75 cm long and weight about 3 kg at birth; they are nursed for approximately four months. In the USSR, harbor porpoises were hunted in the Black and Azov seas; however, hunting for these porpoises has been banned since 1965.

REFERENCE

Tomilin, A. G. Kitoobraznye. Moscow, 1957. (Zveri SSSR i prilezhashchikh stran, vol. 9.)