The Common Dolphin in the Mediterranean needs urgent conservation measures
Factors that likely contributed to making common dolphins increasingly less common include incidental mortality in fishing gear, habitat degradation, and the effects of chemical pollutants, underwater noise, and climate change.
These impacts may have increased demographic fragmentation, resulting in low density or scattered occurrence across most of the basin, small group sizes, and occasional admixture with striped dolphins Stenella coeruleoalba.
Formal commitments to protect Mediterranean common dolphins have been made repeatedly in national and international fora, but conservation action has remained largely on paper.
