Maryland’s harbour porpoise records read like an Assateague story. The island’s national seashore holds 17 of the state’s 38 reports, and Worcester County, home to that barrier island, leads the county list by a wide margin. That’s partly geography, since Worcester is the state’s only ocean-fronting county, and partly attention, since few stretches of Maryland coast get watched as closely.
April is the clear peak month in the record, with March and May close behind. Harbour porpoises are cool-water animals, and a spring pulse along the coast fits their habit of shifting with water temperature and the fish they follow. The handful of reports from Calvert and Wicomico counties show they also turn up inside Chesapeake Bay, not just off the open ocean.
NatureServe ranks the species apparently secure in Maryland, though with a record this modest, that standing rests on broad regional knowledge more than local counting. The numbers here document encounters from shore, boat, and beach, and they can’t be read as a census of what’s swimming just past the breakers.
Full species profile
