Cox et al.: Documenting bycatch of Phocoena phocoena from stranded carcasses 
733 
Virginia. Harbor porpoises are small animals and are 
consumed quickly by scavengers. The National Ma- 
rine Fisheries Service Beaufort Lab and the Univer- 
sity of North Carolina at Wilmington are currently 
increasing the scope and frequency of beach surveys 
in the Mid-Atlantic to locate carcasses before they 
are severely decomposed or scavenged. 
We were able to identify the type of net involved 
in the entanglement of only a small number of ani- 
mals; therefore at present it is not possible to deter- 
mine the type of gillnet fisheries in which these por- 
poises were taken. We assume that all entangled 
animals were caught in gillnet fisheries operating 
very close to shore, because the carcasses of porpoises 
captured farther offshore are not likely to reach the 
beach intact (see above). Although we could not de- 
termine in which fisheries the porpoises were en- 
tangled, we can draw attention to patterns of fish- 
ing activities that correspond to the time and loca- 
tion of strandings. For example, coastal gillnet fish- 
eries for dogfish ( Squalus spp.) and American shad 
(Alosa sapidissima ) are active during March and 
April in the Mid-Atlantic, corresponding to the pe- 
riod in which most harbor porpoise strandings oc- 
cur. A large number of entangled animals stranded 
in Virginia during the spring of 1994, when the 
coastal fishery for American shad was operating near 
the Virginia coast. Records from the state of Virginia 
indicate that 79 licensed watermen, who individu- 
ally harvested more than 100 lb of American shad, 
harvested a total of approximately 387,000 lb of 
American shad in March and April 1994 (Bower 4 ). 
Both the number of licensed watermen who har- 
vested more than 100 lb of shad and the total har- 
vest decreased dramatically in 1995 and 1996 to 50 
and 43 licensed watermen and approximately 
161,000 and 235,000 lb, respectively (Bower 4 ). We 
noted a corresponding decrease in the number of 
stranded harbor porpoises in Virginia in the spring 
of 1995 and 1996 (Table 1). 
Here we have attempted to characterize interac- 
tions between nearshore gillnet fisheries and juve- 
nile harbor porpoises in the Mid-Atlantic. The 
bycatch of harbor porpoises in offshore gillnet fish- 
eries in the Mid-Atlantic is currently monitored 
closely by a National Marine Fisheries Service ob- 
server program and thus can be quantified. Unfor- 
tunately, the same is not true for harbor porpoise 
mortality in the coastal gillnet fisheries. There is a 
need for a directed observer program for nearshore 
gillnet fisheries in the Mid-Atlantic to better esti- 
mate overall mortality of harbor porpoises owing to 
4 Bower, D. Virginia Marine Resources Commission, Newport 
News, VA 23607. Personal commun. 
fishery interactions in this region. Quantifying this 
mortality will help in management and conservation 
efforts for harbor porpoises in the Mid-Atlantic. 
Acknowledgments 
We would like to thank all the stranding network 
volunteers in Maryland, Virginia, and North Caro- 
lina for their dedicated efforts in collecting harbor 
porpoise carcasses. We thank Aleta Hohn and two 
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on 
earlier drafts of this paper. The Smithsonian Insti- 
tution provided facilities and logistical support for 
the necropsy workshops. This research was funded 
by Co-operative Agreements NA57FL0557 and 
NA67FL0431 from the Northeast Fisheries Science 
Center to A. J. Read, Purchase Order 43AANF501263 
from the Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, to A. 
J. Read, and Grant N00014-93-1-Q640 from the Of- 
fice of Naval Research to D. A. Pabst. 
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