Harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) in the North Sea live in an environment heavily impacted by humans, the consequences of which are a concern for their health. Autopsies carried out on stranded harbour porpoises provide an opportunity to assess health problems in this species. We performed 61 autopsies on live-stranded harbour porpoises, which died following admission to a rehabilitation centre between 2003 and 2016. The animals had stranded on the Dutch (n = 52) and adjacent coasts of Belgium (n = 2) and Germany (n = 7). We assigned probable causes for stranding based on clinical and pathological criteria. Cause of stranding was associated in the majority of cases with pathologies in multiple organs (n = 29) compared to animals with pathologies in a single organ (n = 18). Our results show that the three most probable causes of stranding were pneumonia (n = 35), separation of calves from their mother (n = 10), and aspergillosis (n = 9). Pneumonia as a consequence of pulmonary nematode infection occurred in 19 animals. Pneumonia was significantly associated with infection with Pseudalius inflexus, Halocercus sp., and Torynurus convolutus but not with Stenurus minor infection. Half of the bacterial pneumonias (6/12) could not be associated with nematode infection. Conclusions from this study are that aspergillosis is an important probable cause for stranding, while parasitic infection is not a necessary prerequisite for bacterial pneumonia, and approximately half of the animals (29/61) probably stranded due to multiple causes. An important implication of the observed high prevalence of aspergillosis is that these harbour porpoises suffered from reduced immunocompetence.

中文翻译：

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从2003年到2016年，生活在荷兰及附近沿海地区的港口海豚（Phocoena phocoena）疾病的临床，病理和实验室诊断。

北海的海豚（Phocoena phocoena）生活在受到人类严重影响的环境中，其后果影响着人们的健康。对滞留海豚进行的尸检为评估该物种的健康问题提供了机会。我们对活着的海豚进行了61次尸检，这些海豚在2003年至2016年期间进入康复中心后死亡。这些动物滞留在荷兰（n = 52）以及比利时（n = 2）和德国（n = 7）。我们根据临床和病理学标准确定了搁浅的可能原因。在大多数情况下，与在单个器官中出现病理的动物（n = 18）相比，搁浅的原因与多个器官中的病理（n = 29）相关。我们的结果表明，最有可能造成搁浅的三个原因是肺炎（n = 35），小牛与母亲分离（n = 10）和曲霉病（n = 9）。19只动物因肺线虫感染而导致肺炎。肺炎与弯曲假单胞菌，Halocercus sp。和Torynurus convolutus的感染显着相关，但与小裸球菌感染无关。一半的细菌性肺炎（6/12）与线虫感染无关。这项研究的结论是，曲霉病是造成搁浅的重要原因，而寄生虫感染并不是细菌性肺炎的必要先决条件，大约一半的动物（29/61）可能由于多种原因而搁浅。