In the past three days from Friday to Sunday (15-17 July) experts and volunteers of the society have recorded 35 stranded dead cetaceans on the coast from Pomorie to Aheloy. All individuals belong to the species Black Sea Harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena relicta) – protected species listed in annex 2 and 3 of the Bulgarian Biodiversity Act and Endangered species listed in IUCN Red List. All started on Friday when during regular monitoring for cetacean strandings on the sand spit between Pomorie and Aheloy our English volunteer Abigale Killick has registered the record number for the site of 8 stranded porpoises.

On the next day we decided to check if any of the stranded carcasses is relatively fresh for performing a necropsy since the Romanian expert Razvan Popescu who works with Save Koral NGO has arrived in Bulgaria. While inspecting the strandings and discussing are these suitable for necropsy we found two new cases in the northern part of the beach next to Aheloy camping. We decided to patrol again the 5 km long beach and until the evening we recorded the horrific number of 16 stranded cetaceans – all of these being juvenile porpoises with a length of 61 to 77 cm.

On Sunday we decided to perform an early morning check of the beaches at Pomorie town as it is not rare that in morning clean up strandings are being removed. The nightmare continued and at 6:20 am on the very first beach in the central part of town we found several persons that enjoy early morning beach walks to investigate a stranded porpoise. According to eyewitnesses the carcass was washed ashore 10-15 minutes earlier. This time it was an adult individual – the only one in these 3 days. The check has shown that the marine mammal was subject to illegal poaching act and back muscles have been cut, so called “fillets”. Signal was sent to Pomorie municipality and Regional Environmental Authority in Burgas.   

Later during the day we have performed another patrol of the long beach from Pomorie to Ahelpy hoping there will be no new cases but alas the sea kept on wash ashore new and new porpoises and we recorded 11 cases on Sunday. Thus tоtal number of stranded porpoises in these 3 black days reached 35 only on a coastline of 5 km. Each case was documented in detail by recording geographical coordinates, state of the carcass, sex, total length and photos were taken.

During the past week colleagues from Save Koral NGO through the Facebook group – SAVE THE DOLPHINS – have collected information for more than 20 cases of stranded dead cetacean and today we got information that yesterday in the northernmost part of coast to Aheloy other two porpoises were stranded. Adding the fact that we have seen more carcasses in the sea it is very likely that numbers we register on land are only a fragment of the total number of dead cetaceans and the problem is extremely serious. Last summer there were also many signals for dead cetaceans in the period July-August and then number of juvenile porpoises was also the highest.  

We have been collecting data on cetacean strandings for more than 5 years but these cases from the past and current year are definitely a signal for emergency situation and show there is a serious problem for the state of the Black Sea Harbour porpoise.
 
Additional information:
Dimitar Popov – Green Balkans NGO, mobile: +359 885 108712, email: dpopov@greenbalkans.org