{"id":6509,"date":"2017-12-23T08:48:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T16:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/?page_id=6509"},"modified":"2017-12-23T08:48:53","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T16:48:53","slug":"2016-01","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/published-writings-and-art\/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine\/2016-01\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 \u2013 12 Harbor Porpoise"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Harbor Porpoises<\/p>\n

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Can we think of this smart, inquisitive marine mammal as the mermaid of the Salish Sea? I\u2019d like to think so. Appropriately, harbor porpoises are about the size of a woman, 5 feet and 120 lbs. – the smallest of the six species of porpoises. This little beauty is probably the most common cetacean in the Salish Sea and Phocoena phocoena<\/em> is only found here in the inland waters of the Northwest. They live among us as if they were our neighbors, and, I guess they are! Once common here, harbor porpoises almost disappeared in the 1970\u2019s, probably because of gill nets that drowned them and polluted harbors. More northerly populations survived, and now they\u2019re back \u2013 big time. I\u2019d like to think that, for a change, it\u2019s something good we\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

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So where do we see these guys? Harbor porpoises generally tend to be solitary foragers, so a fin may appear, then vanish for a bit, then resurface in a graceful and fluid up-and-down arc. If two fins appear, suspect a mom and young \u2013 they can have one offspring a year throughout a 15-20-year lifespan, being pregnant and lactating at the same time. Occasionally a group can \u2018herd\u2019 fish into position for a meal, but that\u2019s not common. Look for color differences in body parts. The flippers, dorsal fin, tail and back are dark. The question might be asked why are harbor porpoises back? It appears their increases are more than what the locals could naturally produce themselves, and given that they are \u201charbor\u201d mammals, not an offshore species, they must be coming in from the north. Whatever the reason, it\u2019s good news for nature-watching sailors.<\/p>\n

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Larry Eifert paints and writes about wild places. His work is in many national parks across America \u2013 and at larryeifert.com.<\/p>\n

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Harbor Porpoises   Can we think of this smart, inquisitive marine mammal as the mermaid of the Salish Sea? I\u2019d like to think so. Appropriately, harbor porpoises are about the size of a woman, 5 feet and 120 lbs. – the smallest of the six species of porpoises. This little beauty is probably the most … Continue reading 2016 \u2013 12 Harbor Porpoise<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6453,"menu_order":66,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6509","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6509"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6610,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6509\/revisions\/6610"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}