Harbour porpoises leave only a faint trace in New Jersey’s records: 7 since 2000, with 6 logged on iNaturalist and 5 held by GBIF. Monmouth County has 2 of them, one at Gateway National Recreation Area near Sandy Hook, Cape May and Camden counties have one apiece, and the rest lie offshore, outside any county line. NatureServe rates the state population S3, vulnerable, for a species that’s genuinely difficult to observe alive given how briefly it surfaces and how far offshore it typically stays.
Four of the 7 came in March, two in April and one in August, too few to read a real season from, and a count that small likely says more about when observers happened to be out looking than about the porpoise’s actual presence off the Jersey Shore.
Full species profile
