Beredskabet vedrørende havpattedyr 2023: Strandede havpattedyr i Danmark 2023

The National Contingency Plan concerning strandings of marine mammals in Denmark is run jointly by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, the Danish Nature Agency, the Fisheries and Maritime Museum in Esbjerg, the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, the Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University in Roskilde, the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University in Aalborg (the latter only until mid-2023).
The primary objectives of the National Contingency Plan are to record stranded marine mammals along the Danish coastline and to monitor the health status of the Danish populations of seals and cetaceans. Tissue samples and skeletal remains from stranded marine mammals are collected and stored by the two museums and at Aarhus University in order to secure samples for future research projects. Moreover, the National Contingency Plan may euthanize sick or distressed marine mammals. This publication focuses on dead marine mammals registered in 2023. Besides this abstract, the figure and table captions are also given in English.