{"id":915421,"date":"2026-06-25T18:18:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T23:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/whats-black-and-white-and-reveals-historic-porpoise-distributions\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T18:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T23:18:04","slug":"whats-black-and-white-and-reveals-historic-porpoise-distributions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/whats-black-and-white-and-reveals-historic-porpoise-distributions\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Black and White and Reveals Historic Porpoise Distributions?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

These days, there are many ways to survey a population of marine animals\u2014by SCUBA, by boat, by drone, and by satellite. But sometimes, the most old-fashioned way still does the trick. Case in point: A recent study<\/a> in Ecology and Evolution<\/em> relied on newspapers, the original printed variety, to get a handle on porpoise distributions.<\/p>\n

The only marine mammal resident in the Baltic Sea, the Baltic Proper<\/a> harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena<\/em>),\u00a0has declined over the past couple of centuries due to fishing, contamination, and noise pollution. With an estimated 500 individuals remaining, it\u2019s currently listed as Critically Endangered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Researchers from Denmark and Sweden, which flank the Baltic Sea, screened the National Library of Sweden\u2019s archive of digitized newspapers from the 1700s to the early 1900s to ascertain historic porpoise distributions. Using \u201ctumlare<\/em>\u201d (Swedish for porpoise), \u201cmarsvin<\/em>\u201d (Danish for porpoise), and related keywords, they found 1,490 mentions of porpoises. After verifying the porpoise locales, they mapped the mentions of what they estimate to have been 1,455 individual porpoises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more: \u201cThe Unseen Deep-Sea Legacy of Whaling<\/a>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The study authors qualify in a press release<\/a> that these aren\u2019t scientific surveys. \u201cThey are everyday observations, but considered together they show a very different Baltic Sea,\u201d said Magie Aiken, first author and postdoc at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. \u201cAlthough the accounts may lack the precision of modern scientific observations, they provide a unique resource to track the presence and distribution of species that would otherwise be inaccessible,\u201d argue the researchers.<\/p>\n

Based on the newspapers, porpoises lived along the entire Swedish coastline all the way north into the Gulf of Bothnia, where they\u2019re now rare. They likely migrated there from Denmark\u2019s coast to forage along Sweden\u2019s shores during the warmer seasons. According to the news dataset, porpoises were also in German, Lithuanian, and Latvian waters, ringing the Baltic\u2019s northern perimeter. In fact, in a single hunting season in 1880, the take of harbor porpoises from the Little Belt Sea of Denmark was reportedly 800 individuals.<\/p>\n

Looking back further into the archaeological record, harbor porpoises were even more widespread around the Baltic. Clearly, human activities have taken their toll on this faltering population, as today it only occupies about a third of its original range. To reverse this trend, the study authors recommend \u201cproactive protection and management.\u201d<\/p>\n

With all good luck, the conservation needs of this imperiled porpoise population will someday make front-page news. <\/p>\n

Enjoying <\/em>Nautilus<\/a>? Subscribe to our free <\/em>newsletter<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lead image: Juulijs \/ Adobe Stock<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, there are many ways to survey a population of marine animals\u2014by SCUBA, by boat, by drone, and by satellite. But sometimes, the most old-fashioned way still does the trick. Case in point: A recent study in Ecology and Evolution relied on newspapers, the original printed variety, to get a handle on porpoise distributions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":915422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2105,947],"tags":[5118,8724],"class_list":["post-915421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-black","category-whats","tag-black","tag-whats"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}