Is the vaquita's plight linked to the US government's failure to take advantage of one of its most p

Missed Opportunity
Is the vaquita’s plight linked to the US government’s failure to take advantage of one of its most powerful wildlife crime-fighting tools?

RICHARD SCHIFFMAN
Photo by Flip Nicklin / Minden Pictures

ANNA HALL COUNTS HERSELF among a fortunate few. In 2008 the Canadian marine biologist saw a vaquita in the wild — in fact, she saw 35 of the elusive creatures in a single afternoon. That was highly improbable. The doll-faced porpoises — the world’s smallest cetaceans — are notoriously shy, avoiding boats and barely breaking the surface when they rise for air, as they must every three to four minutes. And at the time, there were likely just 245 vaquitas left in the world.

Such a sighting would be impossible today. According to Hall, no more than 15 vaquitas may now remain in the northern Gulf of California, their exclusive home range. (The last official estimate, from 2016, put the number at around 30.) Many fishermen in the Gulf — a 750-mile inlet located between Baja California and the Mexican mainland that, despite the name, is part of Mexico — have never seen one, and some regard the vaquita as something of a mythical creature, like an elf.

Vaquita numbers have nosedived — by nearly 50 percent annually during the past six years — due to illegal fishing. “They’re unintended bycatch,” Hall explains. “Gillnets are the culprit. They’re designed to entangle fish and not let them go. Hundreds of vaquita have drowned silently, and the world just didn’t know.” Despite best efforts to protect them, it’s possible — even likely — that the critically endangered porpoise may be extinct within a year or two.

Even though the vaquitas’ habitat has been designated a no-commercial-fishing zone since 2005, fishermen persist. Local economies along the Gulf are built largely around the fishing industry and many fishermen are after the valuable totoaba, an endangered giant sea bass found only in the central and northern portions of the Gulf of California. Totoaba swim bladders (a buoyancy organ possessed by most bony fish) are coveted in China, where they’re turned into a soup believed to enhance fertility and benefit general health.



Unintened victims of illegal fishing operations in marine protected areas within Mexico’s Gulf of California, vaquitas are on the brink of extinction. There are only about 15 of these shy porpoises left in the world. Photo by Save the Whales.

More:
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/missed-opportunity-vaquita-whistleblowers

Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist based in New York City whose work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and other publications. His latest book, What the Dust Doesn’t Know, was published last February. Follow him on Twitter @Schiffman108.

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From the author:

richschiff • 2 months ago
You can go to the National Whistleblower website. They will direct you on how to write to your Representative and aske them to support the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act.

https://www.whistleblowers.org/wildlife



Vaquitas are very small, shy porpoises, and completely imperiled.