The body of a small harbour porpoise washed up on Fenella Beach, Peel, shortly before Christmas, may not be the kind of thing that would normally bring pleasure to staff at the Manx Wildlife Trust.
However, Pauline Spicer, a member of the ‘strandings’ team who investigate such occurances on the beaches around the island, has said that the way that they became aware of the poor unfortunate mammal has given them hope that they will get to know more about strandings in the future.
The body of the porpoise washed ashore around December 21. Very soon, eagle-eyed Facebook users had it photographed and very quickly word was passed to the strandings team.
‘The nice thing about this is that it was picked up on Facebook,’ said Pauline. ‘The first thing we knew about it was when all these messages started to ping about, and people were contacting me about it.’
This enabled the team to gather accurate data on the corpse with it still being relatively fresh and intact.
‘Information leading, for example, to suggesting why the animal died would offer the team vital information on the health of sea life in the seas around the island, and the more intact and fresh the body is, the better the knowledge can be gathered.
‘The harbour porpoise is a young adult,’ said Pauline. ‘It is a very fresh specimen, and hadn’t been dead that long. There were no signs of anything happening to it, no signs of human interference or boat damage or anything like that. There are marks on its body, but these were caused by rock damage, when the body was washed onto the beach.’
If you find a harbour porpoise, or any simliar stranding on the coastline, contact Lara Howe at the Manx Wildlife Truston 844432 or on lara.howe@mwt.org.uk.
l Grey seals are not being put in danger by human sewage in Manx waters, it has been confirmed. Media reports yesterday (Monday) had suggested this was the case, but in fact the study referred to was of the Isle of May – a tiny island off the east coast of Scotland – not the Isle of Man.