Harbour porpoises are small, shy cetaceans that stick close to cool coastal and estuarine water. They rarely come near enough to shore for a reliable sighting. Virginia’s handful of records, just five in total, come from Chincoteague and Back Bay national wildlife refuges and the Chesapeake Bay. Those are genuine coastal and barrier-island locations, not the inland parks that sometimes show up on these lists for ocean-dwelling species.
Even so, the record is thin and old: the most recent confirmed sighting dates to May 2020, and the monthly counts show only scattered activity in February, April, and May, with nothing logged the rest of the year. NatureServe doesn’t assign the species a state rank here, marking it Not Applicable, which is typical for a marine mammal whose range isn’t bounded by state lines. What’s clear is that harbour porpoises pass through Virginia’s coastal waters. Nobody tracks them closely.
Full species profile
