Partners
National partners
Our work with porpoises and other marine mammals gives us the chance to work with many other research programmes. For example:
- Wageningen Marine Research with diet and contaminant studies
- NIOZ that does research on foraging history of cetaceans
- TNO on the effect of underwater noise on marine mammals
- SOS Dolfijn when a live marine mammal has stranded or just died
- The Dutch Wildlife Health Centre (DWHC) for a continuous exchange of information concerning wildlife disease
The National Stranding Network collects and reports all stranded animals and is partly made up of:
- Volunteers and employees of Ecomare
- The Seal Sanctuary Pieterburen
- ‘A Seal’, who report and collect stranded sea creatures.
- Volunteers of First Aid for Marine Mammals (EHBZ)
- The Rescueteam Sea Animals (RTZ)
Naturalis (the Natural History Museum in Leiden) also registers all strandings on their website www.stranding.nl and they join us when larger whales strand on the Dutch coast.
Collaboration plastic pollution
Plastic waste is a major environmental problem; both in magnitude and in complexity, with effective solutions inherently interdisciplinary. Our researchers are part of the Utrecht Plastic Sources, Sinks and Solutions (UPlasticS3) network. This network is a unique combination of scientists with all expertises required to investigate the sources and sinks of plastic pollution. For more information regarding this network: https://www.uu.nl/en/research/sustainability/uplastics3
European partners
Our research permits close collaboration with similar programmes at European universities, such as the Universities of Liege and Hannover (TiHO) as well as the British Stranding Networks; the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme in Inverness and Glasgow and the Cetacean Stranding Investigation Programme in London. Belgium, Germany, Northern France, England and Scotland all have a North Sea coastline; marine mammals do not recognise country borders and, therefore, a coordinated effort to conserve the North Sea and Wadden Sea marine mammal populations is essential.