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
- Naturalis (the Natural History Museum in Leiden) joins us when larger whales strand on the Dutch coast
- 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
- The Rescueteam Sea Animals (RTZ)
Found a stranded marine mammal? Register it at: www.stranding.nl

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.