Last summer, some 190 dead porpoises washed ashore on the Dutch Wadden Sea Islands within just ten days. A remarkably high number, considering the annual average of about 600 stranded porpoises on the entire Dutch coast. During the past few months, researchers from Utrecht University and Wageningen University & Research—commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality—investigated the possible cause of death of these porpoises. Their most remarkable finding is the presence of Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae: a bacterium which can cause blood poisoning in cetaceans.