Rescuers can’t save pregnant porpoise left ashore in storm

BOSTON – Rescuers say they were unable to save a stranded, pregnant porpoise that washed up in Boston during a recent storm.

The New England Aquarium Rescue Team responded immediately to the harbour porpoise, which became stranded Wednesday in the Dorchester neighbourhood near the Harbor Point housing development. An aquarium spokesman says the animal died just before rescuers arrived at the scene near the storm’s height.

Harbour porpoises are the smallest species of dolphin that lives in New England waters, and they hunt fish in Boston Harbor in winter and spring. The aquarium spokesman says the presence of porpoises near Boston is a “dividend of the Boston Harbor clean-up.”

Biologists with the aquarium say a necropsy showed the porpoise had a nearly full-term fetus and couldn’t survive trauma suffered in the stranding.