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Dead Porpoise Found On Revere Beach

REVERE (CBS) -- A dead harbor porpoise was found on Revere Beach Saturday morning. It is the seventh harbor porpoise that the New England Aquarium's Marine Animal Rescue Team handled in Massachusetts this week. Six of them were dead when found. The seventh had been stranded in a salt marsh in Saugus and is doing well at the University of New England's Marine Animal Rescue Center in Biddeford, Maine.

The Aquarium says all of the porpoises found were yearlings that were underweight and had probably just been weaned from their mothers in the early winter. This leaves it up to them for forage for food through the winter.

Harbor porpoise are not new to the Boston area. They often visit during the winter and spring and while often found in the marshes and harbors, sometimes are found near the oil tank farms of Chelsea Creek and the South Boston seaport area. They like to feed on groundfish including flounder.

The porpoises then migrate to the Gulf of Maine in the spring. About 50,000 to 75,000 of the animals can be found there during the summer where they feed on herring, mackerel, and squid.

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