Last week the body of a baby vaquita was found dead on a shore in northern Mexico.
Vaquitas are the world’s smallest porpoise, about five feet in length, and the rarest, occurring only in the Gulf of California, between Baja California and Mexico’s mainland. It was estimated that only 30 were left, and then they found that dead baby. There were 200 vaquitas as recently as 2012.[teaserbreak]
To conservationists, nothing is more frustrating than to have a distinctive species going extinct in front of our eyes in spite of all the wonderful knowledge, technology, and ability we have to save it.
Continuing threats include “ghost nets”—fishing nets, or net fragments, that have broken loose and are floating free, catching underwater life that starve or drown and rot. Last year, between October 10 and December 7, the navy, fishermen, and conservationists removed 103 such nets.
But nets in active use can also entangle the tiny porpoises. The region has a partial fishing ban, but poachers are seeking a specific fish, also found only in the Gulf, itself, very much endangered, the totoaba, whose swim bladder, when smuggled into China, can fetch thousands of dollars on the black market. It is added to soup.
No matter how good that soup tastes, it does not warrant the extinction of the vaquita, nor the totoaba, which, once also extinct, will obviously never again have its swim bladder added to any human diet.
But simple greed, so important to so many people, drives the demand. Greed is not good.
One risky plan to save vaquitas involves capturing—and keeping captive—all of them in the hopes that they or their offspring, if any, can one day be safely released.
Drones have been used to search for poachers, but the sea is vast, and the concern is that more resources are required to effectively police the region.
Earlier, we were one of many international organizations to ask the U.S. Department of Interior and Commerce to certify Mexico under what is called the Pelly Amendment to the Fisherman’s Protective Act of 1967, for failure to stem the illegal trade in totoaba. But there is a continuing threat, and that is the legal use of fishing gear that threatens both of these species, and so we are one of many organizations that launched a U.S. consumer boycott of Mexican shrimp on March 16, just prior to the Seafood Expo North America in Boston. Over 30 American companies that buy Mexican shrimp have been contacted.
Effective enforcement must occur. The current U.S. administration’s antipathy toward both Mexico and the environment comes at a horrible time for the vaquita and totoaba. We humans will be squabbling about such things until or unless we manage to wipe ourselves out, but the vaquita and the totoaba are the current product of a three billion year evolutionary journey and not just individual, but the entire species will be forever gone if Mexcio can’t make the commitment needed.
They need protection, from us.
Keep wildlife in the wild,
Barry