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Worldwide,
one counts about ninety sorts of cetaceans of which about twenty observed in the
Mediterranean Sea. In France, all the cetaceans are protected by order of July 27, 1995
which stipulates that " are forbidden on all the national territory and any time,
the destruction, the mutilation of all the cetaceans and, that they are alive or died,
their transport, their hawking, their use, their release, their sale or their purchase
".
Cetaceans
are divided into two big groups :
 | Mysticètes (whales), which feed by
filtering the water by means of plates of baleen. They are rather individualistic animals.
They feed on orderlies or the other tiny preys. |
| Odontocèdes (cachalot whales, globicephala,
killer whales, dolphins, porpoises...) which possess teeth. They live in troops
in complex social orders. They hunt fishes and cephalopods (cuttlefishes, octopuses and
squids). Main dangers for cetaceans are: pollution, on fishing exhausting their sources of
food, the diverting nets and the collisions with ferries, cargo boats, first cause of
mortality of whales. |
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