Mexico’s Vaquita porpoise headed toward extinction

News

• Scientists have warned that the population of Mexico’s endangered vaquita marina, the world’s smallest porpoise, has fallen to alarmingly low levels and is heading toward extinction soon if drastic measures aren’t taken.

Vaquita

• The vaquita (Phocoena sinus), also known as the Gulf of California harbor porpoise, is the smallest and rarest of the cetaceans – which include whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
• The vaquita has a gray body with a pale gray or white belly and a dark patch around its eye.
• They are very rarely seen in the wild.Vaquitas have the most restricted range of any marine cetacean.
• They appear to live only in the northern end of the Gulf of California.

Threats

• The greatest threat to the remaining vaquita is incidental death caused by fishing gear.
• Vaquitas are known to die in gillnets set for sharks, rays, mackerels and chano, as well as in illegal and occasionally permitted gillnet sets for an endangered fish called totoaba.
• The vaquitas are threatened primarily by gillnet fishing for the totoaba fish, another endangered species in the area that is hunted for its swim bladder, considered a delicacy in China.
• They are also killed by commercial shrimp trawlers.

Gillnetting

• It is a common fishing method used by commercial and artisanal fishermen of all the oceans and in some freshwater and estuary areas.
• Gill nets are vertical panels of netting normally set in a straight line.

Last census found just under 100 of them

• The last such survey found just under 100 vaquitas in 2014. Overall, their numbers are down 92 percent since 1997.

Joint Action is required

• The Mexican, the U.S. and Chinese governments need to take urgent and coordinated action to stop the illegal fishing, trafficking and consumption of totoaba products.
• In the end, if the vaquita goes extinct it would inevitably be a shared responsibility of the three countries.

May join the ‘extinct’ list

• The Steller’s sea cow disappeared in 1768, the Caribbean monk seal in 1952, the Japanese sea lion in 1970 and the Chinese river dolphin in 2006.
• While capture and captive breeding remain as a possible last resort, no one has ever succeeded in keeping a vaquita alive in captivity, much less breeding them.
• Activists said extinction could also end the kind of shielding effect that the protections for the charismatic porpoises resulted in for the surrounding habitat.