Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Burmeis­ter's por­poises are only found along the coastal wa­ters of South Amer­ica. They in­habit the At­lantic wa­ters on the coast of Brazil and con­tinue to be found south around the coast­lines of Tierra del Fuego and the Falk­land Is­lands and north into the coastal Pa­cific wa­ters of Peru.

• Biogeographic Regions
• atlantic ocean
  • native
• pacific ocean
  • native

Habi­tat

Burmeis­ter's por­poises usu­ally in­habit shal­low wa­ters of 150 me­ters or less in depth and can often be seen in rivers and es­tu­ar­ies. Be­cause the At­lantic Ocean has a wider con­ti­nen­tial shelf than the Pa­cific, it might pro­vide a more pre­ferred habi­tat. How­ever, the Pa­cific coast pop­u­la­tion is larger. This dis­crep­ancy may exist be­cause the Burmeis­ter's por­poises must com­pete with other more dom­i­nant coastal cetaceans on the At­lantic Coast, in­clud­ing So­talia flu­vi­atilis and Pon­to­po­ria blainvillei. In con­trast, Burmeis­ter's por­poises are very suc­cess­ful on the east­ern Pa­cific coast, where they are the main cetacean species in this area.

• Aquatic Biomes
• coastal

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Burmeis­ter's Por­poise was dis­cov­ered by zo­ol­o­gist Her­mann Karl Kon­rad Burmeis­ter of Cologne when he no­ticed that the dor­sal fin of this por­poise ex­tended into an ex­cep­tion­ally sharp point. The dor­sal fin also con­tains rows of tu­ber­cles along its front edge, pro­vid­ing the basis for its sci­en­tific name "spinip­in­nis" (which is de­rived from the latin words "spina" = thorn and "pina" = fin). The body ranges from 1.4 to 1.8 me­ters in length, mak­ing it one of the smaller species in this fam­ily. Males ap­pear to be slightly larger on av­er­age than fe­males.

Burmeis­ter's por­poise is a uni­form color dor­sally vary­ing from dark grey to black while the ven­tral side is paler in pig­men­ta­tion. This species's ten­dency to turn black soon after death has earned it the nick­name "the black por­poise." The pres­ence of an eye patch sur­rounded by a pale grey ring is a use­ful iden­ti­fy­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic. Ad­di­tion­ally, a unique char­ac­ter­is­tic is the pres­ence of asym­met­ric flip­per stripes with a nearly uni­form, straight edged shape on the left side and a more cur­va­cious right side patch that grad­u­ally nar­rows an­te­ri­orly.

The skull mor­phol­ogy of Pho­coena spinip­in­nis can be de­scribed based on other mem­bers of the genus, par­tic­u­lary Pho­coena pho­coena whom it closely re­sem­bles, with the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics: (1) a brain case tend­ing to be much more com­pact length­wise, (2) a dor­sal pro­file of the supraoc­cip­i­tal bone in line with the dor­sal pro­file of the ros­trum in­stead of at a 20 de­gree angle, (3) a larger tem­po­ral fossa, (4)and a lower tooth count of 14-16 upper teeth and 17-19 lower teeth on each side.

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Range mass

  40 to 70 kg

  88.11 to 154.19 lb

Re­pro­duc­tion

At an av­er­age length of 154.8 and 159.9cm re­spec­tively, male and fe­male Burmeis­ter por­poises reach sex­ual ma­tu­rity. Re­pro­duc­tion has not been ex­ten­sively stud­ied in this species; how­ever, a preg­nant fe­male with a near term fetus was found off the coast of Uruguay in late Feb­ru­ary. This ob­ser­va­tion along with other col­lected spec­i­mens have lead reasearchers to be­lieve that the re­pro­duc­tive sea­son oc­curs dur­ing the same pe­riod through­out this fam­ily with mat­ing from June to Sep­tem­ber, calv­ing in May through Au­gust, and ges­ta­tion last­ing about 10 months. At birth, calves gen­er­ally have a length of at least 44cm.

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• seasonal breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• viviparous

• Breeding season

  Mating occurs from June to September

• Average gestation period

  10 months

Be­hav­ior

Burmeis­ter's por­poises are one of the most poorly known species of this fam­ily. They travel in small groups, and it is rare to find more than eight in­di­vid­u­als to­gether at one time. They swim in quick, jerky move­ments, yet are very in­con­spic­u­ous swim­mers, barely break­ing the sur­face of the water when they come up to breath and sel­dom seen breach­ing. Dur­ing sur­fac­ing, they break the sur­face about seven to eight times. This is fol­lowed by an un­der­wa­ter dive last­ing up to three min­utes and a reap­pear­ance as far as fifty feet away. The fastest recorded speed for this species is 4km/h. Burmeis­ter's por­poises are very timid and scat­ter rapidly when ap­proached by boats. These an­i­mals are very dif­fi­cult to find in rough wa­ters and windy con­di­tions, which may be a rea­son why there are so few spot­tings of this species. Vital sta­tis­tics are not well doc­u­mented but one calf was found to have a res­pi­ra­tion fre­quency of 7 breaths/min in a stressed sit­u­a­tion. No un­der­wa­ter sounds have been recorded for this species, yet they can be iden­ti­fied on the sur­face by res­pi­ra­tion sounds.

• Key Behaviors
• natatorial
• motile
• social

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• tactile
• chemical

Food Habits

The Burmeis­ter's por­poise feeds pri­mar­ily on an­chovies and hake, yet squid, eu­phasi­ids, mysid shrimp, and up to nine species of fish also have been found to be a part of its diet. Those found off the coast of Chile have been known to eat mol­luscs as well.

• Primary Diet
• carnivore
  • piscivore

• Animal Foods
• fish
• mollusks
• aquatic crustaceans

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Pho­coena spinip­in­nis is often used for its meat in areas where they are fre­quently caught in fish­ing nets. The meat of these in­di­vid­u­als is used ei­ther as food for hu­mans or for bait­ing crab.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Like many other cetaceans, the Burmeis­ter's por­poise is often taken as by­catch in fish­ing nets. Van Waere­beek et al. stud­ied the num­ber of cetaceans caught by fish­eries at Cerro Azul on the cen­tral coast of Peru. In 87 days, a total of 91 out of 722 (12.6%)cetaceans caught were Pho­coena spinip­in­nis. Ex­ploita­tion oc­curs in Peru and Chile, where the an­i­mals are shot or har­pooned and sub­se­quently sold for their meat, which is used as both bait in crab fish­eries and con­sumed by hu­mans. Pur­pose­ful catches have de­creased since 1994 when stricter leg­is­la­tion was im­ple­mented, how­ever the by­catches have not. The only known nat­ural preda­tor of Pho­coena spinip­in­nis is the killer whale.

• IUCN Red List

  Data Deficient
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Data Deficient
  More information

• CITES

  Appendix II

Con­trib­u­tors

Jen­nifer Ellis (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor, Phil Myers (ed­i­tor), Mu­seum of Zo­ol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

"The Por­poise Page" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 5, 1999 at http://​geocities.​com/​CapeCanaveral/​Lab/​9336/​burmeister.​html.

@​Phocoena.​org, March 12, 1999. "Por­poise Sci­ence and Con­ser­va­tion" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 5, 1999 at http://​phocoena.​org.

Bjorge, A., G. Dono­van. 1995. Bi­ol­ogy of the Pho­coenids. Cam­bridge: In­ter­na­tional Whal­ing Com­mis­sion.

Brownell, R., R. Praderi. 1978. Sta­tus of Burmeis­ter's Por­poise, Pho­coena Spinip­in­nis, In South­ern South Amer­i­can Wa­ters. Mam­mals in the Seas, v. 4: 91-96.

Gaskin, D., G. Smith, A. Wat­son, W. Yasui, D. Yurick. 1984. Re­pro­duc­tion in the Por­poises (Pho­coenidae): Im­pli­ca­tions for Man­age­ment. Re­pro­duc­tion in Whales, Dol­phins, and Por­poises, no. 6: 135-148.

Nowak, R. 1999. Walker's Mam­mals of the World, sixth edi­tion,vol­ume 2. Bal­ti­more and Lon­don: The Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity Press.

Parker, S. 1988. Grz­imek's En­cy­clo­pe­dia of Mam­mals. Mc­Graw-Hill.

Van Waere­beek, K., M. Van Bressem, F. Felix, J. Al­faro-Shigueto, A. Gar­cia-Go­dos. July 8, 1997. Mor­tal­ity of Dol­phins and Por­poises in Coastal Fish­eries Off Peru and South­ern Ecuador in 1994. Bi­o­log­i­cal Con­ser­va­tion, v. 81, no.1-2: 43-49.